2. The enterprise is skittish to adopt because there's no support, so when users get locked out, they often have no recourse, which is bad for business
3. Address this—fill in the missing piece and introduce support
4. People react as if you didn't just announce you would be offering a solution to the very thing they're complaining about
With that said, this announcement doesn't look like it has any relevance to regular consumers. I'm gradually migrating as many things as possible away from Google, having realized that I'd have no recourse if they locked me out my accounts. Their TOS [0] says services can be terminated at any time. I'd feel a lot more comfortable if we had a guaranteed grace period for migrating away upon your Google Account being terminated. IANAL though, so maybe I missed something?
...and that's where the true problem with Google is. There's no mechanism to report/escalate a well-defined and reproducible technical bug - even as a technical sysadmin with a paid account. ...and if a data issue only impacts a small number of people, it'll never get fixed.
The GSuite forums are bombarded with usability questions, and real tech issues are given the old "let's see which FAQ I can post to get some karma" response.
Calling the help desk might get the issue escalated, but it's far far more time consuming than if I could just put a normal bug report together with a screenshot.
I actually work in the GSuite support organisation you refer to .
Firstly, I'm sorry if you feel that you weren't provided with an appropriate level of support. Or that troubleshooting took inordinate effort/time on your part.
Secondly, you probably know this, but there are multiple tiers of support - and there are meant to fairly well defined paths for escalation. Obviously the front line is very much basic initial troubleshooting for the average user - the products cater to a fairly wide range of technical skills/background.
Feel free to reach out to me anytime if you want - my HN username at <company that makes Chrome> dot com.
But most likely you're still going to need that AD or LDAP managed infrastructure because several roles aren't going to be able to get by with a Chromebook (not something I could see my self doing Scala development on personally).
And then it comes down to, what's the point? You're either already securing your company data and backing it up or you're already using hosted services for everything (Office365, GitHub Enterprise, Dropbox Enterprise, etc)
I agree it seems like more Google lock-in and for something so terribly simple too. I mean except for things like the managed app store, you could just get some really cheap Linux laptops and you'd get the same end result.
Also, Google does offer support, usually via a third party plus fanstastic Google for Business (G Suite?) support, as well, in my experience.
[0] http://www.pwc.com/us/en/increasing-it-effectiveness/google-...
You're basing that off of a sample size of one?
That user just said "hm, google-something, business-something... eh, no thanks I don't want to get fucked over." Which is inaccurate but that's what happens.
The twitter mobs are baying for your blood. Some Employees inside Google might also be baying for your blood.
Will Google decide to end the business support agreement, and would you bet your business on the answer to that question being 'no'?
Google Docs is OK, but Google Sheets is abysmal for any serious amount of data. It seems very hard to have Google listen to our concerns.
OK, we are a small organisation, but I'm happy to recommend Google Sheets to anyone but power users. If you are crunching a lot more data than this, then I certainly agree that using a browser-based spreadsheet is not optimal.
The admin panel was also horribly slow and just was a pain to work with, especially once we became the target of a long running phishing attack and would have dozens of accounts locked out every day. It was easily a 30 minute process to restore access to cleaned accounts since the panel at the time (2012-2016) didn't have a way of mass management of users.
You can introduce missing pieces and support all you like, but if people think they can't trust you based on your previous history, then it won't make a whit of difference.
"And thus you see the supreme importance of never having the public find out you've ever, even once, locked someone out without recourse."
At what point do you stop using web browsers in a snit over some corporate bullshit? IE/Edge is MS, Apple does bullshitty things and Firefox is funded by Verizon/OATH.
It would certainly give peace of mind and the next time we read about 1 person in 10 million facing such a problem, we can think, "maybe they should have just paid $10 in insurance." As a public service the insurer could also publish rates of lockout.
I've had this idea for some time, so if you want it you need to reply with a resounding, yes, you'd pay for it. For the record, I'd pay for it. But I need to find 9 million other people too.
[1] I'm not a lawyer or even actuary.
The issue I see is, what happens when a spam-account gets blocked? And how do you keep people who knowingly break e.g. google policy from forming the majority of your customers.
[And for the record - yes, definitely.]
As billing account owner, my account was suspended. That meant I could no longer receive emails, because that was the same account. The Google project was also suspended, terminating all servers and the DNS records for the domain, which were using Google nameservers.
That meant it was impossible to do the Google account recovery process, which relied on adding records to the domain to prove we owned it.
It was also impossible for me to open a support ticket without being able to log in or access the domain.
Thankfully, we had another account on the project that was still able to log in and open the ticket.
It was really a terrible experience. The moral of the story is you can't rely on one provider for everything, especially if they don't have accessible customer support.
Google really should not algorithmically blow away a corporate account in good standing without some notice and cure period offered.
If Google suddenly turned me off right now I don't really know what I'd do. Probably cry in the shower.
In time, you will no longer depend on Gmail for the rest of your life and can just switch to, for example Fastmail, any time.
This is the biggest reason I am hesitant to try fastmail.
Most mail providers can terminate users for any reason, but at least with a few days of notice, allowing you to move the data elsewhere.
But for me, the really killer solution is their 'important mail' filter. I'd love to find an alternative to gmail with a similarly well-functioning system.
Fastmail's spam filter is good† and customisable[0] (with niceties like score displayed right there[1]), to the extent that I just forward things from Gmail by wildcard-disabling the Gmail spam filter[2].
† the learning filter won't kick in until you make it learn 200 messages.
[0]: https://s3.postimg.org/v42zaper7/Screen_Shot_2017-08-23_at_1...
[1]: https://s3.postimg.org/ryidkhw4z/Screen_Shot_2017-08-23_at_1...
[2]: https://s3.postimg.org/lyumgubcj/Screen_Shot_2017-08-23_at_1...
Google can still terminate your account without notice, but if you're using your own domain, you'd at least be free to move to another service immediately.
Oh, and don't forget to get regular backups, so you don't have to start at zero in the case of an account termination.
My main email is in gmail still,no more google searches (resorting to bing would suck), no googlemaps to help navigate, and youtube for content, etc
going to swap to proton mail later or just use my hosting provider on my domain to handle email. Plus local backups
Any consumer facing service faces similar issues. Microsoft in the consumer division has down similar things.
Enterprise services get far better support. Personal services are used by literally billions of users, with possibly millions of fake bot accounts spamming all the time, so it's not surprising that sometimes false positives happen. And providing support to billions of people is not easy.
Better is relative. it is accurate to say it is better than the no support they give to free consumers. But it is a far cry from "good" support
If you've got good devs and admins, the support is really not all that useful. When it comes to managed chromebooks, I bet you could get a similar cost saving experience if you took one desktop and one linux admin and had them try sourcing chromebook-like PCs, installing Linux on them and experimented giving them to employees only needing access to web apps.
Sure you don't get the managed chrome store or whatever, but I bet it'd meet most use cases for a lower cost. Some high schools have managed chromebook programs so there are people out there doing this already.
Edit: ~source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Google... I didn't calculate the average lifetime for their discontinued products, but there are many.
1. More often than not, it's not something nefarious or convoluted, but something very simple. 2. A lot of the things Google does are for the protection of the users themselves (whether from themselves or from outside forces).
(Disclaimer: I work for Google).
It especially does not matter that it wasn't nefarious when Google isn't going to listen to you anyway unless you happen to write a blog post that happens to get viral in the right circles.
It's not like there's a simple form that you can fill and which is reviewed and resolved in a few days reliably if your account gets deactivated by mistake. At that point you might as well be banging your head on a wall for all the good that will do.
Even a few days is unacceptable. There are times in my life where, if my Google Calendar, Google Docs, and email had all been shut off simultaneously, even for only a few days, I would have been completely fucked. Think travel, etc.
I switched to a different email provider for this reason.
(Remember that this also includes your phone, if you're on an Android device).
If you want that level of service, maybe you shouldn't use a free product.
You can have a free product, or you can have good, responsive, human customer service. You can't have both.
If you chose a free product, be ready to handle the consequences of your decision like everybody else.
...did you not read the part where I said I switched to a different provider?
And I was a paying customer - I had a Google Apps account, which comes with an annual fee for providing those services.
Of course, the problem isn't about me personally - it's that so many other, less technically savvy people aren't aware of how vulnerable they are to this problem. They don't think about it until it happens to them.
> You can have a free product, or you can have good, responsive, human customer service. You can't have both
This dichotomy is both reductive and inapplicable. The problem, as explained in this thread, is that Google has a reputation for bad service, even for their paid offerings. It exists, which is more than can be said of the support for the free products, but it's still not good enough. And again, most customers aren't aware of the extent of this and its implications until it's too late.
Agreed, and doesn't need to be less tech-savvy people, just look at HN. People seem to expect good and free service.
> This dichotomy is both reductive and inapplicable.
And is still unavoidable. You can't have both.
> And again, most customers aren't aware of the extent of this and its implications until it's too late.
It is the same behavior with airline tickets. Consumers almost always buy the cheapest ticket, and later complain about the quality of the service.
I am sure the first objection will be "you don't actually pay". Does a farmer not owe his (cash) cow at least basic veterinary (customer) services? I honestly feel like that objection is as naive as claiming that exploitative international trade doesn't actually kill anybody, when there are entire populations held in poverty and without basic safety rights over decades or even centuries due to unjust practices. So I guess the counterpoint to "it's free, don't expect anything" is "if you can't provide a complete product including understanding the problems that derive from it and treating people with respect, you shouldn't offer it at all". Money does not define social responsibility, engaging publicly with other people does.
It is still "free". You don't pay anything to use it.
> they do make a significant amount of money from each customer they can keep in the herd
No, they make a small amount of money from each customer. By far not enough to provide human 24/7 customer support.
> despite the fact that their income could more than support some basic customer service
If that's a fact I'm sure you'll be able to provide enough support to such a claim.
But let's do some basic math. Let's say that Gmail has 1B users, and each user will use customer support once every 2 years, and that each support ticket costs $10 to provide (I've heard similar numbers). Probably far more when you think about all the languages and products.
That's $5B in support per year. Which is 20% of their 2016 profit.
There you go, you can't have a free service and good customer support. Proven.
But hey, you're welcome to vote with your wallet and clicks, and move to another provider that gives free products with free, good, 24/7 human customer support.
Let me guess: you won't. Because there are none. Because it doesn't make any financial sense.
It is entirely irrelevant to this thread and discussion. We are talking about the service for one paid product (Google Apps), on a thread announcing the service for another paid product (Google Chrome Enterprise).
No, OP is talking about this case, which is a free product:
I've never put myself in a position where a freeware product had that much impact on my life. Heck I even pay to backup the paid services to a third party so I have a failover there.
You shouldn't blame Google, you should blame yourself.
Just because it's a consumer (rather than business) account doesn't mean we shouldn't have customer service, if we're willing to pay for it. There's no reason Google can't cater to us while also providing no-service free products.
I'd bet that type of customer service costs far more than that.
> Just because it's a consumer (rather than business) account doesn't mean we shouldn't have customer service, if we're willing to pay for it. There's no reason Google can't cater to us while also providing no-service free products.
And I'd bet there are too few consumers willing to pay for it to justify Google offering. It is the old argumentum ad capitalismum, if it would make money, I'm sure Google would offer it.
Even if few people are paying for it, it's worth it to address the negative perception about Google.
You seem to be assuming that Google (or any other company) does everything right, so if they're not doing it, it's a bad idea. That's not true. Companies make mistakes all the time.
Then nobody will use it, and you've set up a massive support infra in 100's of languages for ~0 paying users.
> You seem to be assuming that Google (or any other company) does everything right, so if they're not doing it, it's a bad idea. That's not true. Companies make mistakes all the time.
I'm assuming that people making those decisions are as smart as me, and if I can think about it, I'm sure they thought about it.
I never base my arguments solely on "other people are making mistakes".
That's before we get into the issue of trying to serve both a mass market and a niche at the same time. It doesn't work. Google should not try to serve the several thousands or few million users who want a fully-featured, paid product for personal use.
An add-on of the kind I'm suggesting is exactly the way to serve both a mass market and a niche at the same time. Everyone uses Gmail, but the few who want support for personal use pay. That's much less effort than building another product with paid support.
It's also no different from freemium mobile apps where 2-5% of users pay.
Google decision-makers are smart, but not infallible.
In other words, a second-tier email service rather than the best in breed.
> In my uni most people do not care if they lose their gmail
No one's forcing them to pay for support.
Is that inherent in using Android, or only if you use Google's own apps and online storage for your calendar etc?
If this software exists and it is an adequate substitute to Google products.. well, let's just use it then.
I think with great trust comes great responsibility, and Google is eroding this trust, as shown in this thread, with kafkaesque processes around account termination.
However, as a general principal, I've found that Google has very robust protections to protect users from both themselves, and from malicious outside forces.
(Disclaimer: I work for Google).
However, the general principals I stated do apply in many cases.
Also - the author of that post has posted a reply:
https://twitter.com/salilstatistics/status/89986397181723852...
Without the huge stink that my prominence created, I would still be locked out. Also, I'm not allowed to talk about why I was banned (which would help others not get banned), nor how someone less notable could've gotten their life back.
"..those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
I recently had an issue where a hijacker, from another country, was able to take over my account and change the password, without access to the backup email, the SMS, or anything except the password.
Google even mailed me a warning that this user from another country was accessing the account, and changing the password.
When I tried to get it restored – I knew the phone number (but had no access anymore because the number was reassigned to another person), had the old password, access to backup email, knew the content of emails on the account, etc – I was denied.
It was easier to get the user who got my old number, contact them, and go together with them through all the steps to get the account back.
To top it even off, after I had contacted Google support about this originally, they never contacted me back – instead, once I recovered the account, I found that instead they had talked with the hijacker.
And you tell me this was to protect me? Honestly, fuck that.
A lot of people hate this answer, but do not entrust Google, Yahoo^H^H^H^H^HOath, or any other big free service with gatekeeper status to anything financial or, really, anything more important than chatting with pals. Host it with someone trustworthy; if that is not you or someone you personally trust, then someone you pay, who will listen to your instructions to, say, never change credentials over the phone, or however you wish to structure it.
> And you tell me this was to protect me?
...In the same sense that the managers of public buildings' preference for you to piss yourself in public over cleaning formerly public restrooms is "for your protection".
But in 2011, no 2FA existed yet, so the old account had none. I had mostly forgotten about it.
Still, I didn't want anyone using it to spam to friends, family, etc in my name.
Then let's not make them happen.
> 2. A lot of the things Google does are for the protection of the users themselves (whether from themselves or from outside forces).
Please please please listen to customer and figure out how to protect them.
I have exactly zero interest in doing business with Google ever again. I don't even look at their new product announcements. I saw what they did to one of our clients about a decade ago. I have never since even looked at a Google service nor recommended them. Search, maps and AdWords are the only things I use. I won't touch anything business critical.
When a company deals with their clients the way you might expect a prepubescent third world country dictator might treat his subjects, well, the best idea is to just stay away.
The advice given typically is to have a separate account for the device 'ownership', that way, even if your main account gets blocked you still have access to it.
See for instance this blog article which talks about that: https://blog.lessonslearned.org/building-a-more-secure-devel...
'factory resetting' a device is easy too so that you can get rid of the device in a nice pristine state...
Never went another day without an IMAP client.
1. Is this a problem if you're using a G Suite account run by a company instead of a personal Google account (as in the linked case, as far as I can tell)?
2. Is this a problem if you're using on-prem AD for auth instead of Google accounts, which is one of the things specifically being introduced in this launch?
I mean, independent of whether you think this was Google shutting down free speech or whatever, it totally seems like neither Google's algorithms or humans should be able to shut down a single corporate account (there's of course cases for shutting down an entire corporate G Suite setup, e.g., if it's used by spammers), but also that seems like such a basic feature that I would have assumed that's written into the contract.
Agree or disagree with a user, but paying for a service doesn't guarantee you get to keep it.
Shopify has made the decision to keep Breitbart as a customer on the pretense they just provide an apolitical service, but crowds certainly tried to pressure them to take a stance and drop them.
I wish OVH would follow that idea when it comes to booting spammers off their network. Failing that, I moved my boxes (that also serve mail, but the legitimate kind) off their network, which ended my troubles with ip range based blacklists.
Sometimes companies need to decide which sort of customers they want to retain.
https://twitter.com/salilstatistics/status/89986397181723852...
I would NEVER trust a Google Operating system in the Enterprise. For example they are pushing a use case as Kiosk's Kiosk need to run for years with stability, not be at the whims of a company that can kill the product in a whim or make substantial non-backward compatible changes to it ever 12 months
OS/2 was used in ATMs for a really long time, and so was WinXP in kiosks. There are a lot of systems that still use XP yes (causing many security nightmares), but Microsoft did support that OS for an incredibly long time. I agree, I wouldn't use anything Google for a Kiosk. You're better off with custom packages ontop of Ubuntu LTS or something similar.
And you could pay Microsoft to keep supporting it. Sure, it might be several million dollars to keep XP support for another year (and big increases each year)... but for some large customers it was available (banks with ATM's based on XP).
Glass was never a consumer product; Explorer Edition was fairly clearly marketed to people developing apps or investigating potential.
Where is my data stored? Does it stay in EU datacentres or does it go to the USA? How would I get support if you terminated my account as I would not be able to log in? etc. etc.
Google is known to drop services just like that.
I guess it's better to not become too dependent on them indeed.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15065742