This is mostly true for any of the free offerings.
If you're paying for the '…for Business' stuff (perhaps with your own domain), then there's probably more availability for recourse and contacts (especially since they're charging your credit card, so they have some form of link to a real human being).
FYI- It is the exact opposite. There is zero support without multiple support tickets, their UI is full of antipatterns. I get to pay and not only do they scan my emails (they claim they stopped that practice, sure) they also won't allow Google Workspace (formerly GSuite) to utilize features like Google Family. I have a tertiarty public account that right now I can't access because I'm travelling and have run afoul of the Google gods and in the Admin console zero way to force allow a login. And I'm paying for that wonderful granular control.
I for one hope the wave of GPT based AI wipes them off the face of the internet, they are valueless. Their search is a joke now. They've been adversarial to the user community for years and reminds me the terrible taste of a monopolized- because lets face it that's what they are- ecosystem with ZERO concern or care about their end user. <insert lilly tomlin phone company skit here>
As it turns out, Google is not sufficiently convinced that I am in fact the owner of the account, so it refuses to let me download the data. I don't feel inclined to spend time trying to figure out this nonsense, but thankfully none of the information in that account is particularly important. I'll take it as a sign that I should just move away from Google, because next time the information on an account could be actually important, and I'd be screwed.
First, getting to a point where you can actually schedule the creation of a zip takes a lot of clicking around - just to make sure that people won't bump into it unless they're explicitly searching for it.
Second, the process is painfully slow (on purpose). Last time I used it was to download my YouTube subscriptions and playlists to import them into my Piped instance. Even though I only have about 100 subscriptions, and only two playlists with about 20 items each, the process took almost two days to complete. By then I had already made a script that scraped the content from their HTML (and it only took me 5 minutes), and another one that did the same but using the YouTube API. If it takes less than a second to get the playlists and subscriptions of a user, I don't see a single reason why generating a Takeout CSV with the same information should take 2 days. I was determined (and tech-savvy) enough to script my way out of it, but many users just get discouraged and give up the idea of exporting their Google data entirely.
> Automatically create an archive of your selected data every 2 months for one year. The first archive will be created immediately.
While I was waiting on that, I finally paid for a proper email service and migrated my domain, so I have a copy of my Gmail data and a working, Google-free email service now.
It's been unreliable for years.
Some people never learn.
If you left LastPass because of its security flaws, then using Chrome's passwords is a bit like driving a scooter with a pasta pot on your head because you feel like a normal helmet is too unsafe.
You can switch browsers and search engines at the drop of a hat. Primarily email, password manager, and long term document storage, not so much.
Last year I was notified by Audi that my email address had been compromised in a data breach. As the spam volume to that mailbox increased, I decided to change it. I discovered that I cannot change the email address associated with my Audi account. When I contacted their Technical Support group, they advised me to delete the whole account (which failed), and create a new one.
As in, they check "if domain != 'gmail.com' { fuckyou(); }"? Or as in "they MTAs are not very good and just don't deliver email"?
I have accounts in the US, EU and Asia due to family, etc. and this kind of restriction is fairly common in EU/Asia
Interesting; I can't say I recall ever encountering such a restriction anywhere, including banks, and I have or had bank accounts in a number of European (and other) countries. I've encountered other problems, but not this. Not that I'm doubting your experience of course; just interesting I never had problems with it.
I do a lot more business in cash locally as a result. Finding a good local bank that will let me physically show up to deal with problems with my money was the hardest part due to the massive consolidation in that industry, but the result is that I am more connected to my community and more resilient to many types of problems.
If you do not like Fastmail, still get your own domain for emails.
I'm now considering switching to Fastmail or Tutanota.
Or even run my own mail server. I used to do that until a couple of years ago, but I eventually got frustrated by all the dumb rules that Google and Microsoft (but mostly Microsoft) set in place to discourage people from running their own servers.
However, given the amount of time that I've already spent to debug the Proton bridge and open PRs to fix their sh*t, I must acknowledge that running my own Postfix server and spending a couple of hours to set up the right DNS records would have probably saved me a lot of time (and money).
Have you used their Nest products? Absolute garbage.
Did you accidentally cross over from some parallel universe or something? In your world, did Trump win in 2016 and lose in 2020? Just checking.
Your email is your most prized possession. It is more important than your credit card number. At least you can call your bank if someone steals it. Also, _ALWAYS_ use your own custom domain for emails. Do not host it @someone-else.com
Stop using a free service from a terrible company that can lock you out at any time and, for Heaven's sake, stop recommending it to non-technical people!
Excepting loved ones, there is not much of a choice is there?
If you help set them up in a way that covers all the basics (personal domain, mail hosted at one of the current batch of paid, reliable parties like fastmail.com), then whenever something goes wrong, or whenever the friction to do something (anything!) is too high, it's not only your fault, but they'll lose trust in anything that doesn't look like a megacorp.
The other alternative is to just point them to Apple/Microsoft/Google where everything just works¹, and when things go tits-up (which, statistically speaking, only happens to a small percentage of people) they'll just blame that faceless megacorp, knowing full well that real choice is limited to those with technical know-how (or direct access to them).
I dislike the status quo, but aside from making sure I and my family aren't stuck like this, I don't see much leeway to change it.
1: It doesn't. But it will feel like it does, which is all that matters, and when it doesn't work, they'll just blame themselves.
What the poster can do in the future is enable 2FA on his Google accounts as that seems to streamline password recovery. At minimum add a phone and backup codes. Even better add a couple yubikeys (and maybe drop the phone after adding yubikeys because phones are super easy to compromise)
Same goes for GitHub.
If you're still using Google products as your primary drivers, then it's entirely your fault.
Do yourself a favour in 2023: drop Google and all the filthy excrement that they produce. There's plenty of much better alternatives, and from a purely market-based perspective Google deserves to rot in hell for all of its sins and shitty products.