The problem is that it hurts the perception of Google, particularly for enterprise customers. If the perception is that Google is unresponsive and gives customers no recourse to address obviously incorrect behavior of its automated systems, it makes it harder for enterprise customers to trust Google with their workloads.

A one off bug like this isn't the end of the world, but it fits into the larger pattern of how Google operates.

Yep, I've been in a position to choose cloud providers before, and I wouldn't touch Google with a ten foot pole (it's basically AWS or Azure in my mind).

I'm already unhappy with the level of control they already have on my life (Gmail and Android).

You can only pile straw on the camel for so long. People will tolerate small problems to a great extent, but not infinitely.

It's certainly good competitive info for Microsoft or others to share during sales calls.

It’s a broken window. Is a perfect example of the craziness of the current state and approach that even the Everyman can understand and be surprised/question/have negative sentiment about.

The MBA thinking ignoring intangibles is exactly the problem, trading short term win for long term loss. Will it actually matter in the end? Probably not and the cycle will continue..

> Is that wrong?

No, resources are scarce and should be allocated wherever offers the best returns.

But it's still lame that Google has this kind of bug, don't you think?

People will think twice before using GCP. I know I'm.

But why didn't you do that all the previous times?

- 13 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=350968 "On friday I woke up to find my google account had been disabled. No gmail, no adsense,adwords,webmaster tools,blog etc etc. No reason given. I've filled out the forms, got an automated response which is totally irrelevant"

- 10 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4013799 and it was happening often enough to be a meme then with people saying: "And this time I'd like the outcome of this thread not to be just "A Google insider wandered past and fixed this guys problem" but "Here's how we're going to make sure it doesn't happen again." and "This is a general problem with Google and their customer-no-service attitude. It's just deplorable. It really is. You have to wonder: What is it going to take for them to give a shit and actually do something about it?"

- 10 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3217549 "Ask HN: Why doesn't Google believe in customer support?"

- 9 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5022091 "Ask HN: How to reach _real_ people at Google?"

- 9 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5120060 "My Gmail account got hacked. Google won't help. I need your advice."

- 6 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10851448 "Help HN: Cannot recover my Google Adsense because of single 1$ mistake"

- 6 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10569902 "Ask HN: Is it possible to get help from a Google employee?(for G+)"

- 5 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13874778 "We accediently created a personal google account using G Suite's main account, and without any warning Google just removed all of our access to a very sensitive data for our organization."

- 3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20203482 "SIM swap horror story: I've lost decades of data and Google won't help", comment: "Google really fails hard in the face of providing support when issues like this occur."

That's a quick search of "help google account" in the HN search down at the bottom of the page, just submissions not comments. Comments immediately comes up with "Xoogler here - actually we used to say "if you are not buying advertising from us, Google can't help you at all"." - joering2, two days ago.

Or this anecdote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30053549 steelframe is telling about Google "After they hung up on [a paying customer] 3 or 4 times, eventually a manager got on the phone and told him (between his screams), "Look, you're not getting any phone support because it doesn't exist. There's nowhere for us to transfer you. There's nobody who can call you back about this. Your only option is to search the forums for an answer to your problem. I am going to terminate this call now. Sir, I'm going to terminate this call. No, we can't help you. Nobody at Google can help you. I am terminating this call now. We asked you to stop calling this number. Do not call us again. <click>""

And don't forget https://killedbygoogle.com/ for products people liked which they shuttered because reasons, most commonly exemplified by Google (RSS) Reader 9 years ago which still comes up in comments present day.

Well, GOOG's share price has tripled in the last 5 years, so that's how much people are staying away from them as a result.

Happened to me a few times, lost all mail accounts (I didn't have too many) because I cannot login from old ISP IP (it probably doesn't even exist anymore). People don't realize what dystopia they're signing into until it's too late ( Android forces people to create G-accounts without real need, that's why their user base is growing. (

Basically, this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30067824