That's enough that someone at Google will acknowledge what you're reporting is a bug on their end, and that they can reproduce it. But it's not enough to get the bug fixed.

The support may be good if you're asking questions they've heard before - or if you need something like an account lock reset, which the support folks have a button for. But if the problem you're encountering requires a code change? Not so much.

(If you're wondering, the bug is "in Google Drive, users with third-party cookies disabled get stuck in a redirect loop when downloading files or viewing videos, as the cross-origin request to googleusercontent.com attempts to redirect to get an auth cookie that never arrives" )

We have a saying here that goes something like "don't buy pizza at a burger joint"... Don't buy services from a advertising / products company.

I will remember this. Thanks.

> That's enough that someone at Google will acknowledge what you're reporting is a bug on their end, and that they can reproduce it. But it's not enough to get the bug fixed.

I will try to remember that the next time I deal with an open-source project, either as a user raising an issue, or as a project contributor helping solve such issues.

Often, we do not realize how lucky we are that contributors to open-source projects help fix the bugs which we report.

Google hold too much control over the internet and the majority of internet users lives, to the point where it's almost authoritarian: They can screw with your personal life and potentially your business without any recourse, causing the effects such as the one I just experienced. I'm not suggesting some large conspiracy against those who oppose Google's affect on the web, and many of us will continue to complain openly and loudly about them because that is our culture. But the effect their position has on freedom of speech is still present, it's a natural instinct, it increases the chances of a large portion of the population to remain silent out of personal fear - and that is concerning.

Once I subscribed to YouTube Music (paid!) family plan, but my wife's account would always say that she is in another country and can not join the plan. I tried everything - the support never even bothered to reply to my emails. I cancelled the plan and since then I keep seeing the same ads for the premium service every time I open the YT mobile app.

(And in fact, what actually happened was they hadn't sorted me out by the time the free trial was up, so I cancelled it and switched to the individual membership. They managed to get things sorted out a week or two after that, but I'm still on the individual membership; my wife just shares my account ID.)

I had to login to both mine and his account in order to complete my support request or they wouldn't help me. When I called them it was like any crappy indian support team which I barely could understand.

Compare that to DigitalOcean for example, there you can actually group resources for an org and their support is actually knowledgeable about their products and can answer questions even about implementation details. Also, you don't need a PhD in order to understand the UI which is a great plus.

I find that extremely difficult to believe without more context. Google support isn’t that bad. I’ve had a mediocre-to-good experience with it over the years.

With that said, while I agree that aws business and enterprise support is worth the hundreds to thousands of dollars a month, so is the five bucks a month for a google workspace account that includes support.

The only item in Google's business playbook...