Google users locked out after 15 years' use • Hacker News Board

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#591

Post by carapace » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

everfree wrote: post #507

carapace wrote: post #481

A few comments in this thread rub me the wrong way. E.g.: > It should be illegal. > How is this not regulated? No one forces you to use these services. They're voluntary. Imagine you're looking for storage for some stuff. One company advertises a storage service, which is free, but there's a clause in the contract that says, "We can take your stuff at any time, for any reason, no backsies." Would you trust your stuff…

> No one forces you to use these services. They're voluntary The problem is that they are a lot less voluntary then you think in certain segments. * Running ads against a blog without using Google Adsense puts you at a disadvantage. * Running an online store without Google Shopping puts you at a big disadvantage. * Bootstrapping an online video show without YouTube is effectively impossible. So if you are, say, an in…

My objection is to popular legal theft. The folks I'm calling out want those nice things you describe but not on the terms Google is (evidently) willing to offer them for and are therefore calling for laws to take them by force.

In other words, what I hear you saying is that their excuse for (what I'm calling) theft is that the thing they're stealing is really good.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#592

Post by ikiris » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

tifadg1 wrote: post #422

londons_explore wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work on adsense. There is no facility for an "earnings cap". Your revenue is the literal sum of earnings from every click on your property. While ads are showing and being clicked on, you will always be earning more. If I were to guess, you failed to implement ads.txt and/or your content didn't meet the standards required by some big advertisers, so auction pressure was very low for your site.

So you're saying he was smart enough to grow this revenue to 2000/month, but, in the meantime forgetting something that basic - and the system caught up with him? If so where was the system before?

You're assuming that it was Google's system that changed, and not their primary ad buyers.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#593

Post by carapace » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

bojo wrote: post #500

carapace wrote: post #481

A few comments in this thread rub me the wrong way. E.g.: > It should be illegal. > How is this not regulated? No one forces you to use these services. They're voluntary. Imagine you're looking for storage for some stuff. One company advertises a storage service, which is free, but there's a clause in the contract that says, "We can take your stuff at any time, for any reason, no backsies." Would you trust your stuff…

Sorry, but this is a terrible analogy. Your storage service isn't used for your primary identity/access management to your house, bank account, or utilities, and this is where your argument breaks down. Much like internet should be a regulated utility (in the US at least) due to how integrated with modern day society it is, the right to an unalterable email address should also be considered, especially due to the fac…

> Your storage service isn't used for your primary identity/access management to your house, bank account, or utilities, and this is where your argument breaks down.

If anything that strengthens my argument.

> The vast majority of users out in the world use these free services because they don't know anything else, and nor would I expect them to. As pioneers we the technical community herded them at these push button solutions decades ago, and now it's up to us to realize we've somehow failed them at this point by locking them into monopolistic companies that don't have their best interests at heart.

To me this just sounds like the worst sort of techno-elitism. You're describing a world of Morlocks and Eloi and campaigning for veganism.

> 1. We educate them and start promoting services which won't pull the carpet out from under them on a whim

Yes. I agree.

> 2. We start advocating for regulation on the existing services and force them to comply.

No. I disagree. I have come to believe that it's just simple hubris to think that we (the technical community) have any clue what's going on in re: normals using computers. Did you predict Twitter? I sure didn't.

I predicted a lot, like coin vending machines for raccoons, and mesh networking. But no one cares about those things. Half the world thinks Facebook IS the Internet.

Google-- FAANG and the other corps, are already AIs that merely farm human beings. The sick (IMO) thing is that most people are hunky-dorey with it. Amazon is one of the most trusted entities according to polls.

Sovereignty is jealous: either these mechanical gods with humans for cells will become the new de facto governments of the world, or we nationalize them, which I don't even know what that would mean...

Er, um, I got a little ranty there at the end, eh? Sorry. What I'm saying is, if they are private corporations then grabbing their services by legal theft is bad pool. If you really want to wrest control, go whole hog and nationalize the suckers.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#594

Post by ksk » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

feduphn wrote: post #409

indigochill wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is this not regulated? It doesn't need to be (and shouldn't be). Just use an email provider that respects you as a customer and don't put all your eggs into one corporate basket (especially not one that treats you as nothing more than data cattle). Horror stories like this one will, over time, educate people that this behavior pattern is dangerous. IMO self-hosting is the ideal because that aligns responsibilit…

This victim-blaming needs to stop before the tech industry backlash hits. This is exactly why we need regulation. I swear, if "just go somewhere else" were good advice (and it's not), we wouldn't be having this conversation. How many years has it been, though, that Google and other consumer-ignorant companies have been able to get away with this, helped along by people who tell victims to just "go somewhere else"? No…

How do you change people's mindsets from 'free is good' to 'free is bad' though? They're not planning on being customers of Google.

>This victim-blaming needs to stop before the tech industry backlash hits. This is exactly why we need regulation.

Google will simply dilute the language of the regulation, to the point where they will simply add a "your account can be deleted at any time for any reason, proceed at your own risk" popup during sign-up, and people will happily hit continue/next.

Systemic reform can't exclusively happen top-down or bottom-up. There needs to be some of both. We need to stop giving Google free good-will on HN. Stop up-voting Google product launches, stop promoting Chrome, etc, etc.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#595

Post by benhurmarcel » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

tarruda wrote: post #453

I've saw quite a few similar stories over the past years and this left me very scared. I've been a heavy user of google services for more than 15 years. For some months now (maybe a year?) I've been trying to reduce dependency on google services and apps. It is a slow process, but I hope to get it done in the next year or so. Meanwhile I try to use google takeout as much as possible to keep up to date backups of my d…

Fastmail is good, Mailbox.org is reputable and a bit cheaper.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#596

Post by ksk » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 7:35 PM UTC

megous wrote: post #535

bigwavedave wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That would backfire spectacularly, and would probably kill gmail. How would that kill gmail? It's not like they're going to lose any real part of their user base. Short of a press release from google confirming the behavior, the average user is not going to go through the hassle of finding a replacement provider and then changing every email address associated with every service they use (if it's even possible for…

A ton of online services, customer support services, government services, airlines, etc. etc. use e-mail but don't use gmail to send it. They can't afford to let 20% of that go to spam without a backlash. And if they kept doing it despite the backlash, who knows what would have happened to gmail. Lose a few thousand dollars or an entire vacation by google regularly blackholing messages from important and expensive se…

>They can't afford to let 20% of that go to spam without a backlash.

They will launch a 'secured sender' program where you pay Google a monthly fee so your company's email doesn't fall into spam.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#597

Post by ksk » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 7:42 PM UTC

kashura wrote: post #425

Mikho wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Value = proper Office suite online and offline with proper document formatting and files + more storage. Altogether cheaper than G Suite. Also it's really great value to have Office installed locally as a proper software. Not a crappy dumbed down browser web-site.

I pay for Gsuite which is $6/mo and extra 100gb of storage, for $8 total. The part that drives me nuts about 0365 is that they don't allow custom email domains below Business 0365 which is $12 a month.

Hmm I see it at $6.99/mo ..

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/microsoft-36...

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#598

Post by pkaye » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 7:47 PM UTC

raisedbyninjas wrote: post #571

a3n wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing worse than hanging your identity on @gmail.com is @comcast and the like. If you can, your own domain backed by a fastmail or a proton is the sweet spot of easy and flexible, or at least an @fastmail, @proton or similar. With payment comes the possibility of human support, which I have received easily from fastmail.

Without going to the step of moving photos, mail, contacts, etc. off of Google services. Are there automated tools available to periodically export that data?

You can use the "download your data" feature of Google to download a copy. However you have to manually trigger the export. Also no incremental download so it can be a lot of data being transferred.

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en

Edit: Looks like Google Takeout lets you schedule the download (ie once every month)

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#599

Post by bojo » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 7:59 PM UTC

carapace wrote: post #593

bojo wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but this is a terrible analogy. Your storage service isn't used for your primary identity/access management to your house, bank account, or utilities, and this is where your argument breaks down. Much like internet should be a regulated utility (in the US at least) due to how integrated with modern day society it is, the right to an unalterable email address should also be considered, especially due to the fac…

> Your storage service isn't used for your primary identity/access management to your house, bank account, or utilities, and this is where your argument breaks down. If anything that strengthens my argument. > The vast majority of users out in the world use these free services because they don't know anything else, and nor would I expect them to. As pioneers we the technical community herded them at these push button…

> Half the world thinks Facebook IS the Internet.

That was pretty much my point.

Anyways, I think in a way we are saying the same thing. Keep fighting the good fight.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#600

Post by tim333 » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 8:01 PM UTC

Not fitting very well with their old don't be evil motto. They could always have a paid service (maybe $20?) to have someone look up the problem and tell you what it was perhaps?