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Re:The only way to get hold of a human at Google by theretodivert on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @03:08PM (#4014752)
Comparing email, adsense, etc. to rakes is flawed. (Please, don't persuade me otherwise.)

I agree that the gmail economic model might not be feasible if support costs were included. But I don't know that numbers so my agreement is not important.

If 99% of users have no problem with google's services currently then, X% have no problem with google's services in the future. I'm not sure how to solve for X.

Re:The only way to get hold of a human at Google by bmelton on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @03:13PM (#4014780)
I don't necessarily disagree, but the assumption that not providing support on a free service is evil is the more flawed idea, I think.

Also, as I recently discovered, Google does have a for-pay phone support service for Gmail users, as well as all the other forms of support they offer in the form of message board, how tos, google groups, etc.