This!

I remember being *stunned* in a positive way by Google's out of the box thinking back when they *invented* "self-service" account management, aka "no phone support provided". I thought that it was a brilliant move and that this little search company was really going places.

I hope I might be forgiven for failing to anticipate the consequences for our least affluent sisters and brothers.

I am now of the opinion (for many, many reasons) that human-interactive customer support is a mandatory cost of doing business when your business is materially important in the lives of the customers (both paying and not paying customers).

That Gmail is "materially important" is well established already, yes?

It's the opposite. Paid services where you get to speak to a human require more affluence.