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This really seems like it needs to be regulated in law. For telephone companies, there are rules about when they may disconnect you, e.g. the Arizona Utilities

This really seems like it needs to be regulated in law. For telephone companies, there are rules about when they may disconnect you, e.g. the Arizona Utilities Division write > f I am unable to pay my entire bill, what can I do to maintain local dial tone? > The Arizona Administrative Code specifically states that a telephone company may not disconnect a customer for failure to pay an unregulated portion of their bill. To maintain local service, you must pay for the regulated (landline) charges on your telephone bill while you work to resolve problems with the other portion of your bill. If you fail to pay the unregulated charges on your bill, those services may be subject to disconnection and a deposit to reestablish. (R14-2-509) > How much notice does a telephone company have to give before disconnecting service? > A telephone company is required to give 5 days advance written notice before disconnecting service. (R14-5-509 Section E) In this case, Google killed people's email without any prior warning, and in retaliation for an unrelated business transaction (selling smartphones). Having your email disrupted like that is at least as bad as getting your phone cut off.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
Willing to bet if any of them were Google Fi or Google Fiber customers, their phones would be cut off as well. Of course, much of their fight with AT&T over pole attachment rights has been Google's unwillingness to be classified as a "telecom"[0]. I suspect Google is very unwilling to be held to these sorts of legal responsibilities. "Basically, the current regulations require companies with utility poles in the public rights of way to provide access to certified telecommunications providers and to TV/cable companies," Paul Lewis, assistant manager of telecommunications and regulatory affairs in Austin, told Ars. "Google is not a certified telecommunications provider, and it's a video service provider as opposed to a television/cable company." If Google were to apply to the Public Utility Commission of Texas to become a qualified telecom, "It would make them subject to all of the state and federal telecommunications regulations," Lewis said. [0]http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/why-att-says-it-can-deny-google-fiber-access-to-its-poles-in-austin/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/why-att-says-it-c...
- linkregister 10y ago
  Wouldn't Google be able to set up a wholly-owned subsidiary to be the designated telecom in Texas? That's how the ride-sharing companies do it in order to insulate the parent companies from having transportation law apply to their headquarters. I think it's indicative of more than just Google being unwilling to be held to the legal responsibilities; it appears that even their Fiber arm doesn't want them as well.
djsumdog 10y ago
And with e-mail, that's often a means of authentication. Many services won't change your e-mail without sending an e-mail to your prior service. You can essentially get locked out of your Steam account.
- basch 10y ago
  exactly. if you pay for a service and google or facebook are your authentication, you are locked out of the third party services you pay for.
- ivm 10y ago
  I recently got locked out of my old bank account because I didn't use the SIM from my country of origin for 5 months. My mobile operator disabled my ~15yo phone number and I can't recover it without flying there and visiting their office with my ID. That's why I also feel uneasy towards all these number-based messengers. They're targeted at users who rarely leave their countries.
  - majewsky 10y ago
    Or at least get a mail address or similar from everyone whom you're talking to on a number-based messenger, so that you can recover from a lost messenger account. (Doesn't help, though, if you lose the phone number and your mail account at the same time.)
xeniak 10y ago
Regulate a free service? I wonder if any G Suite customers had their accounts closed.
mooman219 10y ago
Opinions about regarding Google as a utility aside, I think the comparison this argument makes isn't as comparable as you make it sound. Using your example with telephone companies, this situation is like saying a specific 3rd party service accessed via telephone should be regulated without actually regulating the telephone companies first. I would like to see ISPs be regulated as a utility before individual web sites are regulated as such. In the event that becomes reality, the time would have to be taken to define what minimum level of services the web site would have to offer. Simply saying Google must keep X service available would be archaic. Would other email providers be exempt from having to maintain these rights? If your job gave you an email address, would they have to maintain it after you leave the company? These are probably contrived questions, but ones that would certainly have to be answered first.
- amelius 10y ago
  Gmail is part of the chain of technology that lets me communicate, so I think a comparison with a telco is fair. Also there could be a distinction in the law for mass communication, e.g. #users > 1M.
  - peeters 10y ago
    > Gmail is part of the chain of technology that lets me communicate, so I think a comparison with a telco is fair. And it's actually harder to switch to a secondary. With my ISP, if they cut me off I can fall back on my cell provider within minutes. I have no such failover for my Google services.
snowwrestler 10y ago
Google's terms of service say that each user retains the copyright to their content, but grants to Google a license so that Google can provide services. If Google has the only copy of some of this content, I wonder if a copyright claim might have any leverage. It's one thing to give Google a license; it seems like quite another for Google to deny you access to your own copyrighted material.
- a3n 10y ago
  That route would only get you copies of your email. It wouldn't help you change a password on a 3rd party service, if their practice was to require confirmation through your address on record.
a3n 10y ago
Fastmail. I'm just a regular (paying) customer, not a business or anything. I've opened a small number of tickets, one or two of the RTFM variety. I've always got a human response and satisfaction, even a "here, let me RTFM that for you." I can't imagine being locked out of my fastmail account for anything other than abuse of my fastmail account. Or not paying my bill.
- brongondwana 10y ago
  We also stalk you on... I mean, we read the same tech news sites you do. (I'm on third line ticket duty right now, so if you have something significantly more complex than RTFM, or an actual bug, you'll probably be talking to me this week) The most common cause of getting locked out other than you abusing your fastmail account is having your credentials stolen and used for spam/fraud, which is why we recommend 2 factor authentication: https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/securityupgrade.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/securityupgrade.html But yeah, even then we don't lock you out forever - just need you to reconfirm your identity and re-secure your account.
  - josephg 10y ago
    Awesome - I moved across to fastmail a couple of days ago. I've been using a custom domain for email for awhile (josephg.com), merged with a gmail account. I'm very happy I set that up because moving to fastmail was a cinch - there's no forwarding to do, just a few DNS records to reconfigure. And with a custom domain I'll have that email address for life, no matter what happens to fastmail. My gmail account (josephg@) gets a tremendous amount of email for other people. Earlier this year I was getting a lot of marketing trash from a particularly excited group of car dealerships in Illinois. Around the same time youtube suspiciously started advertising new cars to me. Its all way too creepy, and reading articles like this about people's gmail accounts getting locked out I'm very happy to reinforce my digital independence from google.
    - josephb 10y ago
      > My gmail account (josephg@) gets a tremendous amount of email for other people. Same with my josephb@. It's amazing how many companies start sending personal identifiable information to a random email address without validating it. Doctors, real estate, universities, banks and the list goes on.
jmnicolas 10y ago
Enough with the Fastmail astroturfing on HN already !
elcct 10y ago
> This really seems like it needs to be regulated in law Absolutely not! That way you are slowly making people to lose any bits of the common sense they might still have. Perhaps losing data once or twice will make people look for alternatives. Throwing in another regulation will just increase barrier of entry for companies offering emails and who knows what else some dumb politicians could come up with, maybe this will open the gate to even not being able to self host an email server.
nilved 10y ago
> This really seems like it needs to be regulated in law. Or use backups. Don't go crying to the government when you can handle it yourself.
- peeters 10y ago
  It's not a question of backups. Even with no data loss, the cost of most people being shut out of their Google account is absurdly high. Missed texts. Missed calls. Missed emails. Can't log into third party sites. If Google wants to have a monopoly on all of that stuff, they need to be subject to regulation that compartmentalizes their services and what they can and can't do arbitrarily.
  - nilved 10y ago
    They don't want a monopoly, you want them to. You opted in to it, and you only end up in such a horrible position when you make a series of horrible decisions. Missed texts and phone calls? How did you even get into the position where Google controls your telephony? Missed emails? Why are you using gmail.com? Third-party authentication? Did they not have the option to use e-mail or a username? You can't fix every problem by band-aiding regulation on top of it. Sometimes you need to step back and wonder how you got here, and solve that instead.
    - peeters 10y ago
      > They don't want a monopoly, you want them to. Of course they do. Every strategic decision the company has made over the last two decades is to try to secure a monopoly on your data. You make it sound like it's easy to run your own full stack of all web-connected applications. It's not. The cost is INSANELY high. So your real choice is whether to use one company, or dozens of individual companies for every individual service. The latter protects you against the risk of something like this happening. But it comes at a day-to-day expense which will far outweigh the prevented risk for 99.9% of people.
      - nilved 10y ago

ocdtrekkie 10y ago

Willing to bet if any of them were Google Fi or Google Fiber customers, their phones would be cut off as well. Of course, much of their fight with AT&T over pole attachment rights has been Google's unwillingness to be classified as a "telecom"[0]. I suspect Google is very unwilling to be held to these sorts of legal responsibilities. "Basically, the current regulations require companies with utility poles in the public rights of way to provide access to certified telecommunications providers and to TV/cable companies," Paul Lewis, assistant manager of telecommunications and regulatory affairs in Austin, told Ars. "Google is not a certified telecommunications provider, and it's a video service provider as opposed to a television/cable company." If Google were to apply to the Public Utility Commission of Texas to become a qualified telecom, "It would make them subject to all of the state and federal telecommunications regulations," Lewis said. [0]http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/why-att-says-it-can-deny-google-fiber-access-to-its-poles-in-austin/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/why-att-says-it-c...

linkregister 10y ago
Wouldn't Google be able to set up a wholly-owned subsidiary to be the designated telecom in Texas? That's how the ride-sharing companies do it in order to insulate the parent companies from having transportation law apply to their headquarters. I think it's indicative of more than just Google being unwilling to be held to the legal responsibilities; it appears that even their Fiber arm doesn't want them as well.

djsumdog 10y ago

And with e-mail, that's often a means of authentication. Many services won't change your e-mail without sending an e-mail to your prior service. You can essentially get locked out of your Steam account.

basch 10y ago
exactly. if you pay for a service and google or facebook are your authentication, you are locked out of the third party services you pay for.
ivm 10y ago
I recently got locked out of my old bank account because I didn't use the SIM from my country of origin for 5 months. My mobile operator disabled my ~15yo phone number and I can't recover it without flying there and visiting their office with my ID. That's why I also feel uneasy towards all these number-based messengers. They're targeted at users who rarely leave their countries.
- majewsky 10y ago
  Or at least get a mail address or similar from everyone whom you're talking to on a number-based messenger, so that you can recover from a lost messenger account. (Doesn't help, though, if you lose the phone number and your mail account at the same time.)

xeniak 10y ago

Regulate a free service? I wonder if any G Suite customers had their accounts closed.

mooman219 10y ago

Opinions about regarding Google as a utility aside, I think the comparison this argument makes isn't as comparable as you make it sound. Using your example with telephone companies, this situation is like saying a specific 3rd party service accessed via telephone should be regulated without actually regulating the telephone companies first. I would like to see ISPs be regulated as a utility before individual web sites are regulated as such. In the event that becomes reality, the time would have to be taken to define what minimum level of services the web site would have to offer. Simply saying Google must keep X service available would be archaic. Would other email providers be exempt from having to maintain these rights? If your job gave you an email address, would they have to maintain it after you leave the company? These are probably contrived questions, but ones that would certainly have to be answered first.

amelius 10y ago
Gmail is part of the chain of technology that lets me communicate, so I think a comparison with a telco is fair. Also there could be a distinction in the law for mass communication, e.g. #users > 1M.
- peeters 10y ago
  > Gmail is part of the chain of technology that lets me communicate, so I think a comparison with a telco is fair. And it's actually harder to switch to a secondary. With my ISP, if they cut me off I can fall back on my cell provider within minutes. I have no such failover for my Google services.

snowwrestler 10y ago

Google's terms of service say that each user retains the copyright to their content, but grants to Google a license so that Google can provide services. If Google has the only copy of some of this content, I wonder if a copyright claim might have any leverage. It's one thing to give Google a license; it seems like quite another for Google to deny you access to your own copyrighted material.

a3n 10y ago
That route would only get you copies of your email. It wouldn't help you change a password on a 3rd party service, if their practice was to require confirmation through your address on record.

a3n 10y ago

Fastmail. I'm just a regular (paying) customer, not a business or anything. I've opened a small number of tickets, one or two of the RTFM variety. I've always got a human response and satisfaction, even a "here, let me RTFM that for you." I can't imagine being locked out of my fastmail account for anything other than abuse of my fastmail account. Or not paying my bill.

brongondwana 10y ago
We also stalk you on... I mean, we read the same tech news sites you do. (I'm on third line ticket duty right now, so if you have something significantly more complex than RTFM, or an actual bug, you'll probably be talking to me this week) The most common cause of getting locked out other than you abusing your fastmail account is having your credentials stolen and used for spam/fraud, which is why we recommend 2 factor authentication: https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/securityupgrade.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/securityupgrade.html But yeah, even then we don't lock you out forever - just need you to reconfirm your identity and re-secure your account.
- josephg 10y ago
  Awesome - I moved across to fastmail a couple of days ago. I've been using a custom domain for email for awhile (josephg.com), merged with a gmail account. I'm very happy I set that up because moving to fastmail was a cinch - there's no forwarding to do, just a few DNS records to reconfigure. And with a custom domain I'll have that email address for life, no matter what happens to fastmail. My gmail account (josephg@) gets a tremendous amount of email for other people. Earlier this year I was getting a lot of marketing trash from a particularly excited group of car dealerships in Illinois. Around the same time youtube suspiciously started advertising new cars to me. Its all way too creepy, and reading articles like this about people's gmail accounts getting locked out I'm very happy to reinforce my digital independence from google.
  - josephb 10y ago
    > My gmail account (josephg@) gets a tremendous amount of email for other people. Same with my josephb@. It's amazing how many companies start sending personal identifiable information to a random email address without validating it. Doctors, real estate, universities, banks and the list goes on.

jmnicolas 10y ago

Enough with the Fastmail astroturfing on HN already !

elcct 10y ago

> This really seems like it needs to be regulated in law Absolutely not! That way you are slowly making people to lose any bits of the common sense they might still have. Perhaps losing data once or twice will make people look for alternatives. Throwing in another regulation will just increase barrier of entry for companies offering emails and who knows what else some dumb politicians could come up with, maybe this will open the gate to even not being able to self host an email server.

nilved 10y ago

> This really seems like it needs to be regulated in law. Or use backups. Don't go crying to the government when you can handle it yourself.

peeters 10y ago
It's not a question of backups. Even with no data loss, the cost of most people being shut out of their Google account is absurdly high. Missed texts. Missed calls. Missed emails. Can't log into third party sites. If Google wants to have a monopoly on all of that stuff, they need to be subject to regulation that compartmentalizes their services and what they can and can't do arbitrarily.
- nilved 10y ago
  They don't want a monopoly, you want them to. You opted in to it, and you only end up in such a horrible position when you make a series of horrible decisions. Missed texts and phone calls? How did you even get into the position where Google controls your telephony? Missed emails? Why are you using gmail.com? Third-party authentication? Did they not have the option to use e-mail or a username? You can't fix every problem by band-aiding regulation on top of it. Sometimes you need to step back and wonder how you got here, and solve that instead.
  - peeters 10y ago
    > They don't want a monopoly, you want them to. Of course they do. Every strategic decision the company has made over the last two decades is to try to secure a monopoly on your data. You make it sound like it's easy to run your own full stack of all web-connected applications. It's not. The cost is INSANELY high. So your real choice is whether to use one company, or dozens of individual companies for every individual service. The latter protects you against the risk of something like this happening. But it comes at a day-to-day expense which will far outweigh the prevented risk for 99.9% of people.
    - nilved 10y ago