I agree with this really in relation to every cloud provider. If your business continuity and data are important, there should be a plan for how to keep the lights on if a provider through malice or incompetence stops playing nice. The google specific problem is they are into so much stuff that its not just a question of not using them, you also have to consider what happens when your emails are flagged as spam our you're delisted from search, etc
Google flagged our main event site as a phishing site during a large event that was lasting multiple weeks. No matter how many load tests you do, always have contingency for Google.
TDLR: Even if you DONT USE GOOGLE as YOUR CLOUD provider, always be aware of its impacts on your customers/busisness!
Beyond that, it's a damn shame startups keep choosing Google for Google Plus or GSuite or Workhorse or whatever the fuck it's called now. The winning move is to not play with them.
(Note to self: stop giving feedback on Maps routing. You never know.)
In addition to that, you should frequently take a backup of your Gmail emails[3], then in case your account is locked you can use the exported mbox[4] archive, and import it in Thunderbird, this works reasonably[5] well, e.g. recently I had to find an airline ticket from 10 years ago which I had originally received in Gmail, and it took just a few seconds to find it in Thunderbird.
[1] https://support.google.com/mail/answer/21289?hl=en&co=GENIE....
[2] https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22370?hl=en
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Takeout
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbox
[5] Thunderbird's search is not as good as Gmail's, but not bad either, I find it does the job for me.
I still don't feel like going traipsing around minefields. I'm sure there's a benefit from tying together all Google services - for me, it just keeps me away from most of them. And I even pay for Google One.
you would think that paying for it would translate into a slightly better level of customer care. But that doesn't seem to be the case with Google. I pay for YouTube premium and I had my fair share on unanswered issues. Not sure about the other services though, YouTube is the only Google product I still use and I have a separate account only for that. Hopefully Google One turns out to be better than YouTube Premium!
So you can have an occasional annoyance but it's not that common.
When I get a new IP (e.g. because I'm upgrading to a newer machine) first I check my IP against a list of antispam filters (I don't want to advertise any of those services, but a quick internet search will show you where you can check, most services have a free tier), if it turns out that the IP has got a bad reputation, I just get a new one instead of trying to whitelist it.
The only time that my email got bounced, that IP was not "clean", it had been blocked by one of the filters but I thought "oh I will just whitelist it on that one filter". I should have generated a new one instead.
One more thing that some people might not know: with all spam filters, if your email is caught by the filter, you will get a message, it's not like you don't know if the email has been delivered or not.
You will see something like "Your message could not be delivered - The mail system [host, ip] refused to talk to me: [reason, e.g. spam]"
Leave your phone at home if your are going to protest, no matter what or where you are protesting.
Briar* is a great app to communicate securely, even during an Internet blackout over Bluetooth.
An absolutely stellar customer support network with real people was being operated by Network Appliance when I was there for less than $60 million A YEAR.
Google is absolutely capable of providing a level of service that is unmatched, but they choose not to.
I'll get comfortable.
Except I believe that there’s a deeper cause here, the misalignment between the interests of the actual users and the company to whom the users aren’t actually a source of revenue except by numbers that can be shown to advertisers and investors. (Further down this goes to our expectation of free service; it was all fun and beta at first but it turned out to be a trap.)
Importantly, providing human service will address a symptom but not eliminate said misalignment—it’ll keep manifesting itself.
That kind of stuff needs to end. Email's are required to conduct business and interact with the govenrment nowadays. A private company should not be allowed to just remove your ability to interface with businesses online. My bank can't effectively steal all my money and close my accounts just because I have a personal viewpoint or hell, even committed a felony! But for some reason (especially redditors) people think it's okay for a private company to shut someone down entirely just because of some form of speech or whatever reason simply because it's a private entity.
The problem is that because so many people misuse that option they deny the economies of scale that would support flourishing paid email providers. And a lot of people think they are OK with the no support plan but they really aren't, and this turns out to be the case when a bot shuts them down. Unfortunately the paid privacy focus email providers suck right now, both at spam filtering (looking at you, protonmail) and the overall UX. Gmail is just much better.
People who comment on Google's lack of human support ignore the fact that it's a virus that's engulfed the whole online world. Almost every large company has automated chatbots, voice response systems, FAQs, and every imaginable way to avoid paying human beings who know things. And let's not even talk about whether they're empowered to actually do things for you.
Google could certainly lead and maybe the rest of the world would have to follow. Maybe.
People using search, gmail, drive etc aren’t the customers.
(Fortunately I haven’t been called a wog to my face in decades)
That said, Google does ha reputation for this shit, especially on their free plans, so, you should definitely keep that in mind when storing data on Google Drive.
While it does make it harder to share things directly, its well worth the hassle
Maybe the laws should actually protect us, what the hell do we pay taxes for
There has been a literal, yet largely silent, book burning going on with Google services in recent years. On youtube, many alternative voices are silenced, billions of comments deleted.
I know its a private company, but in the US there are free speech laws + the possibility of using the court system (if someone makes a libellous statement). But no, silencing voices is in the realms of corporate policy - the rule of law has been deemed to not apply.
I found a total of 3 that _hadn't_ been deleted.
Edit: it's not this ^^^
Also, Google is not a private company.
It's not like the government doesn't play a role. These platforms can only exist because of government protections, and those protections should come with protections to the public against censorship.
Do you ever imagine how unnerving it would be, if 99% of all online discourse in your country took place on platforms owned by foreign corporations?
Given that context, I thought it was clear I was talking about the nature of free speech laws in the USA.
To that end, free speech has been upheld against social media platforms in specific circumstances. Eg when Trump blocked people he didn’t like on Twitter.
I’ll get downvotes for saying this because it’s a popular meme on HN to shout “free speech” but most who argue it misunderstand the law and it’s important to understand what the law actually states if you want to make a complaint about business not abiding by it.
Personally I don’t think the problem is that platforms are legally allowed to censor the content they host. In fact I can think of some legitimate case studies for why a company should be allowed to moderate the content it hosts (eg if it’s a platform aimed at children). I think the real problem is a combination of:
- people repeatedly falling back to the same few hosting platforms for everything, this allows the impact of those company’s hosting terms to be far further reaching than it ever should be. Eg if you know your military studies might trigger Googles bot then don’t use Google!
- and the companies providing a broken escalation process. Meaning what should be a relatively simple review ends up taking a mammoth public campaign on yet another social network just to get a human to look at the case.
Point 1 is really the crux though. This is one domain where boycotting actually does make a difference. Granted not to Google’s financials, but it does make a difference to us. Because the best way to avoid shitty T&Cs is to use a service that doesn’t have shitty T&Cs. There’s no shortage of hosting platforms out there so it really is that simple.
Bake the cake.
I hope MS customer support is better…
I definitely understand the sentiment and curious if you researched options before making this switch?
The choice between Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace should mostly be a matter of taste.
Google Workspace is very straightforward and largely offers better finish and UX. I personally dislike Google's material design and find myself confused by it, but most people seem fine with it.
M365 Business Standard on the other hand is arguably a better deal if you value the macOS and Windows versions of Microsoft's office apps. The UI isn't always good and the web versions suck, but everything is also very flexible and intended to scale to almost everything the IT dept of a Fortune 500 companies with tricky compliancy requirements might require to control a fleet of Windows machines.
eg I had to fix a domain issue, albeit a domain issue caused by some stupid google stuff, and was connected to helpful competent people within a minute or two. Peers have similar experiences.
The paying stuff is fine.
The "gOoGle pRoVIDeS nO sUPPoRt" narrative is only about their free offerings. Paying customers get stellar support, at least in my experience.
PS: I tend to avoid google services, but google workplace is too damn superior
“Google is robbing me of my money by banning my access to the account im paying for” should give quick responses
All done entirely through a text chat.
$2/mo or $20/yr
Like Facebook and content moderation, it's a problem entirely of their own making. Zero sympathy, caveat emptor.
No one wants to deal with a company that can shut you down any moment for no good reason and with no way to resolve the situation. If they continue like that, their dominance may be slowly eroded by smaller companies that actually care for all of their customers. It won't happen overnight, but once the movement has gained momentum, it will be hard for a giant like Google to adjust.
To say they have no support is too generous. It is more like they have an aggressively anti-support model.
Sadly, it seems that this should be so well known as to be considered foolish to use Google (and many others) for anything critical.
Its is not like Google lacks the capital or organizational scale to provide good support - they just refuse to do so. If they actually did it, they could probably do an amazing job, but that is not their goal.
Google really has an unfortunate customer support set up, in that there isn't one. Your best bet when Google does something bad to their customers like this (And regardless if its a bad AI or bad bot, its still Google doing it), is to post it on twitter or hackernews and hope it gets the visibility for a Google employee to fix it, or contact someone who can fit it. That isn't a support model.