6 ms·

Not providing any meaningful support is Google's business model - you can see them talk about it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU0Z_HAzO3I https://www.yout

by edent 10y ago

Not providing any meaningful support is Google's business model - you can see them talk about it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU0Z_HAzO3I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU0Z_HAzO3I > Google estimates that they would need to hire over 20,000 customer service people to deal with 1 query every three years from each customer. So it has decided - as far as possible - to employ zero people and rely on algorithms. https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/02/googles-customer-contempt-conundrum/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/02/googles-customer-contempt-c...

adamc 10y ago
Which is a really good argument for never developing for the Google eco-system. Because you can't afford to invest in a platform where if something goes wrong you're just f*cked.
- pyvpx 10y ago
  to be fair, for some parts of the eco-system, and for some values of investment, you can pay for support.
- malka 10y ago
  Agreed. At least on other corporate eco systems (Microsoft, Oracle, etc.), if you are a paying customer, you have great support.
  - colemannerd 10y ago
    Absolutely! You only have to use 10 year old technology for that support.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      Great! It's had time for a lot of the bugs to get knocked out, and most of the rest to be well enough known for fixes to be pretty solidly understood.
- Touche 10y ago
  Precisely why I develop for the web.
- Merovius 10y ago
  You are oversimplifying. There were multiple stages of things going wrong and there is no system where things can't get wrong to the point where "you're just fcked". What do you think how many innocent people got put in prison with no avenue of appeal, for example? Even suing for your right won't guarantee you the correct outcome and at some point you'll exhaust your options of appeal. This person just won the unfortunate lottery that in a large enough sample there has* to be at least one person who gets treated unfairly. Plus, of course, they are butthurt over the fact that they don't understand how trademark works (I mean… honestly? How could they think that that rename would make it better?). It's not like they didn't get multiple levels of appeals by humans, they just didn't like the answer they got so felt more comfortable blaming automation.
pyvpx 10y ago
so then hire 200 customer service people to handle the queries when the algorithms go awry? surely there is an algorithm they can devise that will identify when the other algorithms have made mistakes. right? :-)
- misingnoglic 10y ago
  The problem is that if a human is available to talk to, people will normally tend to that option even if their answer is on the help page.
  - pas 10y ago
    Then let those 200 people pick from the email firehose? For example if the sender is a Chrome ext. developer with more than 10 000 downloads?
- Merovius 10y ago
  Why do you assume that this is not the case? Humans have a failure rate for repetitive tasks between 1 and 10% (depending on who you ask). So even (unrealistically) conservatively and including having two steps of appeal, you would need to assume a minimum false positive rate of at least one in 10K cases (you can even make that a million, if you want, by adding another layer) that get appealed. Now, what do you estimate, how many chrome app store takedown notices, youtube copyright claims, android bugs… whatever, does Google get in any given week? It is literally unavoidable that there will be a significant number of cases that fall through the cracks. And as long as it only takes one of those to post a blog post and get on HN, I don't see much value in increasing the cost for this any further, tbh (I just love how that article completely ignores any statistics when comparing this with the case of Apple btw. Not only is Safari only a tenth of the size, basic statistics should tell you that you won't be the unlucky bastard in both stores simultaneously). The issue isn't algorithms or automation. The issue is, that we can't yet completely replace some jobs with them. And humans suck, especially at scale.
eloisant 10y ago
It makes sense not to have humans responding about how their site is indexed or removed, because that's pretty much everyone. However, they should really consider hiring support staff for: * Their paying customers * The partners bringing value to their products, typically extension developers and Android app developers
- kyrra 10y ago
  Products that make google money that you have to pay for have some amazing support. Cloud and Adwords being 2 examples. As you go through the sign up flow, they give you a phone number to call if you have any questions. As a software engineer at Google, I have handled a few bugs or issues that originated from customers calling our support lines.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    > Products that make google money that you have to pay for have some amazing support. And yet, the best place to get support, even for Cloud customers – as has happened before – seems to be this very website, because the Google support just doesn’t care.
  - joesmo 10y ago
    It doesn't matter what kind of support you have for Cloud if Google's first reaction is to turn off all services and there isn't a way to get in touch with support outside of social media. Adwords may have some support, but as we've clearly seen here on HN, Cloud does not and out of all the offerings Google has, that one should have the most support. The only people I can see using Cloud at this point are people who are ignorant that Google's response to problems will be an immediate shutdown and people who are not ignorant of such and therefore extremely risky or stupid. Either way, it's not a professional service nor is it production ready. I'm thankful everyday now that I did not migrate to such an infantile and unsupported system. In light of this, everything else about the service including pricing and features is irrelevant. In fact, the whole service is irrelevant and childish. A toy at best.
    - 10y ago
3pt14159 10y ago
There is a difference between supporting every customer (aka, the mass of people behind your average YouTube comment) and supporting developers that promote your ecosystem. By failing to support this one person this one time, they've damaged a lot more people's experience, and the average developer is much more likely to be an influencer. This guy is influencing influencers because he couldn't get a 2 minute support query handled. And this is why Google's ecosystems suck. They don't put in the work. Podcasts say "going live this week" then never go live. They've completely fucked up their books store by making authors not be able to control discounts, which, combined with Amazon's price match, means that authors have to choose between randomly having their revenue fully cut or skipping the Google book marketplace altogether. Spoiler alert: they skip the Google marketplace. Heaven help me if my gmail address gets marked as a spammer account. I'll basically be completely fucked, but I don't trust anyone else as much with security.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  it's a tradeoff. having engaged support for every app developer would mean they would have to admit many fewer apps to the ecosystem. they have chosen to more freely admit apps but provide no support for them.
  - pas 10y ago
    They could do both.
    - metaphorm 10y ago
      no, they couldn't. the budget to pay for a large amount of support on a very open app ecosystem is prohibitive, even for a company like google. the compromise position that they could do, but apparently haven't done, is to sell paid support packages for app developers that need/want more engaged support from google.
      - pas 10y ago
        No, I mean they could do a minimal support thing. Hire one people to respond to devs of these pretty popular extensions (so let's say above 10 000 installs). Make the number of emails the guy/gal has in the queue public, so devs can know how long they have to wait on average.
brainfire 10y ago
That's interesting, because I've spoken to two Google support reps on the phone in the last two years (related to chrome os and their music service.) They must be so bad at customer support they can't even employ zero people properly.

by edent 10y ago

adamc 10y ago

Which is a really good argument for never developing for the Google eco-system. Because you can't afford to invest in a platform where if something goes wrong you're just f*cked.

pyvpx 10y ago
to be fair, for some parts of the eco-system, and for some values of investment, you can pay for support.
malka 10y ago
Agreed. At least on other corporate eco systems (Microsoft, Oracle, etc.), if you are a paying customer, you have great support.
- colemannerd 10y ago
  Absolutely! You only have to use 10 year old technology for that support.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Great! It's had time for a lot of the bugs to get knocked out, and most of the rest to be well enough known for fixes to be pretty solidly understood.
Touche 10y ago
Precisely why I develop for the web.
Merovius 10y ago
You are oversimplifying. There were multiple stages of things going wrong and there is no system where things can't get wrong to the point where "you're just fcked". What do you think how many innocent people got put in prison with no avenue of appeal, for example? Even suing for your right won't guarantee you the correct outcome and at some point you'll exhaust your options of appeal. This person just won the unfortunate lottery that in a large enough sample there has* to be at least one person who gets treated unfairly. Plus, of course, they are butthurt over the fact that they don't understand how trademark works (I mean… honestly? How could they think that that rename would make it better?). It's not like they didn't get multiple levels of appeals by humans, they just didn't like the answer they got so felt more comfortable blaming automation.

pyvpx 10y ago

so then hire 200 customer service people to handle the queries when the algorithms go awry? surely there is an algorithm they can devise that will identify when the other algorithms have made mistakes. right? :-)

misingnoglic 10y ago
The problem is that if a human is available to talk to, people will normally tend to that option even if their answer is on the help page.
- pas 10y ago
  Then let those 200 people pick from the email firehose? For example if the sender is a Chrome ext. developer with more than 10 000 downloads?
Merovius 10y ago
Why do you assume that this is not the case? Humans have a failure rate for repetitive tasks between 1 and 10% (depending on who you ask). So even (unrealistically) conservatively and including having two steps of appeal, you would need to assume a minimum false positive rate of at least one in 10K cases (you can even make that a million, if you want, by adding another layer) that get appealed. Now, what do you estimate, how many chrome app store takedown notices, youtube copyright claims, android bugs… whatever, does Google get in any given week? It is literally unavoidable that there will be a significant number of cases that fall through the cracks. And as long as it only takes one of those to post a blog post and get on HN, I don't see much value in increasing the cost for this any further, tbh (I just love how that article completely ignores any statistics when comparing this with the case of Apple btw. Not only is Safari only a tenth of the size, basic statistics should tell you that you won't be the unlucky bastard in both stores simultaneously). The issue isn't algorithms or automation. The issue is, that we can't yet completely replace some jobs with them. And humans suck, especially at scale.

eloisant 10y ago

It makes sense not to have humans responding about how their site is indexed or removed, because that's pretty much everyone. However, they should really consider hiring support staff for: * Their paying customers * The partners bringing value to their products, typically extension developers and Android app developers

kyrra 10y ago
Products that make google money that you have to pay for have some amazing support. Cloud and Adwords being 2 examples. As you go through the sign up flow, they give you a phone number to call if you have any questions. As a software engineer at Google, I have handled a few bugs or issues that originated from customers calling our support lines.
- kuschku 10y ago
  > Products that make google money that you have to pay for have some amazing support. And yet, the best place to get support, even for Cloud customers – as has happened before – seems to be this very website, because the Google support just doesn’t care.
- joesmo 10y ago
  It doesn't matter what kind of support you have for Cloud if Google's first reaction is to turn off all services and there isn't a way to get in touch with support outside of social media. Adwords may have some support, but as we've clearly seen here on HN, Cloud does not and out of all the offerings Google has, that one should have the most support. The only people I can see using Cloud at this point are people who are ignorant that Google's response to problems will be an immediate shutdown and people who are not ignorant of such and therefore extremely risky or stupid. Either way, it's not a professional service nor is it production ready. I'm thankful everyday now that I did not migrate to such an infantile and unsupported system. In light of this, everything else about the service including pricing and features is irrelevant. In fact, the whole service is irrelevant and childish. A toy at best.
  - 10y ago

3pt14159 10y ago

There is a difference between supporting every customer (aka, the mass of people behind your average YouTube comment) and supporting developers that promote your ecosystem. By failing to support this one person this one time, they've damaged a lot more people's experience, and the average developer is much more likely to be an influencer. This guy is influencing influencers because he couldn't get a 2 minute support query handled. And this is why Google's ecosystems suck. They don't put in the work. Podcasts say "going live this week" then never go live. They've completely fucked up their books store by making authors not be able to control discounts, which, combined with Amazon's price match, means that authors have to choose between randomly having their revenue fully cut or skipping the Google book marketplace altogether. Spoiler alert: they skip the Google marketplace. Heaven help me if my gmail address gets marked as a spammer account. I'll basically be completely fucked, but I don't trust anyone else as much with security.

metaphorm 10y ago
it's a tradeoff. having engaged support for every app developer would mean they would have to admit many fewer apps to the ecosystem. they have chosen to more freely admit apps but provide no support for them.
- pas 10y ago
  They could do both.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    no, they couldn't. the budget to pay for a large amount of support on a very open app ecosystem is prohibitive, even for a company like google. the compromise position that they could do, but apparently haven't done, is to sell paid support packages for app developers that need/want more engaged support from google.
    - pas 10y ago
      No, I mean they could do a minimal support thing. Hire one people to respond to devs of these pretty popular extensions (so let's say above 10 000 installs). Make the number of emails the guy/gal has in the queue public, so devs can know how long they have to wait on average.

brainfire 10y ago

That's interesting, because I've spoken to two Google support reps on the phone in the last two years (related to chrome os and their music service.) They must be so bad at customer support they can't even employ zero people properly.