6 ms·

I actually agree with this. I'd be too concerned about if Google or a Google AI bot randomly decided to deactivate or delete my work life. As a company what rec

I actually agree with this. I'd be too concerned about if Google or a Google AI bot randomly decided to deactivate or delete my work life. As a company what recourse would you have? I'd also be concerned about losing work and trade secrets etc... Yeah no. Just no.

carussell 9y ago
1. Offer a service 2. The enterprise is skittish to adopt because there's no support, so when users get locked out, they often have no recourse, which is bad for business 3. Address this—fill in the missing piece and introduce support 4. People react as if you didn't just announce you would be offering a solution to the very thing they're complaining about
- jstewartmobile 9y ago
  yeah... if you count "enterprise" "support" as a "solution" to what they're complaining about.
  - carussell 9y ago
    The comment I'm responding to is literally about questioning how a business could be comfortable using this. What do you want me to say? Do I have the complaint wrong?
    - JohnTHaller 9y ago
      It says you have 24/7 enterprise support. It doesn't say that your paid accounts will be immune to whatever process is used to shut down a Google account (including Gmail, Hangouts, Blogger, YouTube, etc) without warning or explanation.
      - JBReefer 9y ago
        Even inside a given service - you think Viacom suddenly stops paying top talent without notice? They at least buy you dinner first.
    - nol13 9y ago
      There's nothing to say. "And thus you see the supreme importance of never having the public find out you've ever, even once, locked someone out without recourse."
    - Spooky23 9y ago
      The comment you responded to is a troll. At what point do you stop using web browsers in a snit over some corporate bullshit? IE/Edge is MS, Apple does bullshitty things and Firefox is funded by Verizon/OATH.
- saghm 9y ago
  Should you really have to pay extra for the privilege of not being locked out?
- SerLava 9y ago
  I guess you've described the 4 steps to existing as a company that makes itself known for burning the fuck out of people without recourse - you don't get to have a good reputation in the areas you want. That user just said "hm, google-something, business-something... eh, no thanks I don't want to get fucked over." Which is inaccurate but that's what happens.
- johnjhayes 9y ago
  I get what you're saying, but Google's history here is atrocious, which is why business' are skittish, people aren't just going to take their word for it. You go first, if you and 100 others have a good experience maybe that attitude will change. Until then, hard pass.
  - TheAceOfHearts 9y ago
    FWIW, I think Google has been turning things around for their paid services. I've had to contact Project Fi customer support a few times, and found it vastly superior to all previous experiences with telcos. They're also probably getting a ton of experience in dealing with enterprises thanks to GCP. With that said, this announcement doesn't look like it has any relevance to regular consumers. I'm gradually migrating as many things as possible away from Google, having realized that I'd have no recourse if they locked me out my accounts. Their TOS [0] says services can be terminated at any time. I'd feel a lot more comfortable if we had a guaranteed grace period for migrating away upon your Google Account being terminated. IANAL though, so maybe I missed something? [0] https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/ https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/
    - corobo 9y ago
      Likewise I've never had a problem contacting someone at Adwords. I've spent like £200 total as well so I'm not exactly a big business spender.
    - koheripbal 9y ago
      I manage several GSuite accounts. The tech support staff is friendly and helpful, but if the problem is outside their list of known issues or current outages, they're basically useless. They aren't developers and they have no access to investigate underlying system data/logs, let alone resolve anything. ...and that's where the true problem with Google is. There's no mechanism to report/escalate a well-defined and reproducible technical bug - even as a technical sysadmin with a paid account. ...and if a data issue only impacts a small number of people, it'll never get fixed. The GSuite forums are bombarded with usability questions, and real tech issues are given the old "let's see which FAQ I can post to get some karma" response. Calling the help desk might get the issue escalated, but it's far far more time consuming than if I could just put a normal bug report together with a screenshot.
- archontes 9y ago
  And thus you see the supreme importance of never having the public find out you've ever, even once, locked someone out without recourse.
  - themacguffinman 9y ago
    What about the importance of understanding what a business support agreement is?
    - imron 9y ago
      Let's say for arguments sake, you have a business support agreement and then it comes out in the news that your business (or maybe just a rogue employee) has done something horribly racist or sexist. Maybe not even racist or sexist, but that something that gets blown out of all proportion and so people think what happened was racist or sexist. The twitter mobs are baying for your blood. Some Employees inside Google might also be baying for your blood. Will Google decide to end the business support agreement, and would you bet your business on the answer to that question being 'no'?
- chris_wot 9y ago
  The company I work for uses Google extensively. Simple stuff like Google Admin is abominably slow, and important things we need like Google Groups are, to be frank, rubbish. Google Docs is OK, but Google Sheets is abysmal for any serious amount of data. It seems very hard to have Google listen to our concerns.
  - chris_wot 9y ago
    It's sad I'm being downvoted for speaking about our experience using Google. I work for a major Australian company and we dove right into Google. I'm not entirely negative about it, lots of it is great, but there are still significant gaps.
    - dijit 9y ago
      Your comment is/was not necessarily relevant to the more political issue of being forcibly removed from having access to your data with absolutely no way of recovering it.
    - khedoros1 9y ago
      I think you're just being downvoted for being off-topic. This part of the thread's about how trustworthy Google is as a host, and the likelihood of being locked out of your account for some arcane reason, and a discussion of the merits and flaws of their products doesn't fit in smoothly.
    - mnglkhn2 9y ago
      His comment is relevant as to how would a new product be perceived through the experience had with other products offered by the same company.
  - foxylad 9y ago
    Interesting. I guess it depends on your definition of "serious amount of data". Our entire accounting system is built on Google Sheets, including about ten thousand transactions in four currencies per financial year. The system summarises by country and cost centre, and has sheets that provide our current profit and loss, and nice things like all the fields in each of the tax forms we have to complete. OK, we are a small organisation, but I'm happy to recommend Google Sheets to anyone but power users. If you are crunching a lot more data than this, then I certainly agree that using a browser-based spreadsheet is not optimal.
- cm2187 9y ago
  Yep. And that's called a reputation.
- imron 9y ago
  The problem with destroying trust is that it's really hard to rebuild it. You can introduce missing pieces and support all you like, but if people think they can't trust you based on your previous history, then it won't make a whit of difference.
logicallee 9y ago
Would you pay for an insurance service against this, meaning that if this occurs you get paid out whatever monetary sum you had paid the premium against? (And just so everyone knows, insurance fraud is illegal, can be a felony in all 50 states, and lands you in jail.)[1] It would certainly give peace of mind and the next time we read about 1 person in 10 million facing such a problem, we can think, "maybe they should have just paid $10 in insurance." As a public service the insurer could also publish rates of lockout. I've had this idea for some time, so if you want it you need to reply with a resounding, yes, you'd pay for it. For the record, I'd pay for it. But I need to find 9 million other people too. [1] I'm not a lawyer or even actuary.
- rocqua 9y ago
  I'd pay, given I have enough trust. I'd also be happy to e.g. half my payout for legal assistance in retrieving whatever access was taken away. The issue I see is, what happens when a spam-account gets blocked? And how do you keep people who knowingly break e.g. google policy from forming the majority of your customers.
  - logicallee 9y ago
    Thanks, but your and the other reply weren't enough :)
- mdpopescu 9y ago
  Unfortunately, people lie - even to themselves. The only way to see if such a service is viable is to actually offer it. [And for the record - yes, definitely.]
  - logicallee 9y ago
    thanks, but your and the other reply weren't enough :)
- hobarrera 9y ago
  Given that google doesn't usually accurately describe why accounts are closed, such an insurance company would never be able to prove insurance fraud and be completely exposed to it.

carussell 9y ago

1. Offer a service 2. The enterprise is skittish to adopt because there's no support, so when users get locked out, they often have no recourse, which is bad for business 3. Address this—fill in the missing piece and introduce support 4. People react as if you didn't just announce you would be offering a solution to the very thing they're complaining about

jstewartmobile 9y ago
yeah... if you count "enterprise" "support" as a "solution" to what they're complaining about.
- carussell 9y ago
  The comment I'm responding to is literally about questioning how a business could be comfortable using this. What do you want me to say? Do I have the complaint wrong?
  - JohnTHaller 9y ago
    It says you have 24/7 enterprise support. It doesn't say that your paid accounts will be immune to whatever process is used to shut down a Google account (including Gmail, Hangouts, Blogger, YouTube, etc) without warning or explanation.
    - JBReefer 9y ago
      Even inside a given service - you think Viacom suddenly stops paying top talent without notice? They at least buy you dinner first.
  - nol13 9y ago
    There's nothing to say. "And thus you see the supreme importance of never having the public find out you've ever, even once, locked someone out without recourse."
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    The comment you responded to is a troll. At what point do you stop using web browsers in a snit over some corporate bullshit? IE/Edge is MS, Apple does bullshitty things and Firefox is funded by Verizon/OATH.
saghm 9y ago
Should you really have to pay extra for the privilege of not being locked out?
SerLava 9y ago
I guess you've described the 4 steps to existing as a company that makes itself known for burning the fuck out of people without recourse - you don't get to have a good reputation in the areas you want. That user just said "hm, google-something, business-something... eh, no thanks I don't want to get fucked over." Which is inaccurate but that's what happens.
johnjhayes 9y ago
I get what you're saying, but Google's history here is atrocious, which is why business' are skittish, people aren't just going to take their word for it. You go first, if you and 100 others have a good experience maybe that attitude will change. Until then, hard pass.
- TheAceOfHearts 9y ago
  FWIW, I think Google has been turning things around for their paid services. I've had to contact Project Fi customer support a few times, and found it vastly superior to all previous experiences with telcos. They're also probably getting a ton of experience in dealing with enterprises thanks to GCP. With that said, this announcement doesn't look like it has any relevance to regular consumers. I'm gradually migrating as many things as possible away from Google, having realized that I'd have no recourse if they locked me out my accounts. Their TOS [0] says services can be terminated at any time. I'd feel a lot more comfortable if we had a guaranteed grace period for migrating away upon your Google Account being terminated. IANAL though, so maybe I missed something? [0] https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/ https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/
  - corobo 9y ago
    Likewise I've never had a problem contacting someone at Adwords. I've spent like £200 total as well so I'm not exactly a big business spender.
  - koheripbal 9y ago
    I manage several GSuite accounts. The tech support staff is friendly and helpful, but if the problem is outside their list of known issues or current outages, they're basically useless. They aren't developers and they have no access to investigate underlying system data/logs, let alone resolve anything. ...and that's where the true problem with Google is. There's no mechanism to report/escalate a well-defined and reproducible technical bug - even as a technical sysadmin with a paid account. ...and if a data issue only impacts a small number of people, it'll never get fixed. The GSuite forums are bombarded with usability questions, and real tech issues are given the old "let's see which FAQ I can post to get some karma" response. Calling the help desk might get the issue escalated, but it's far far more time consuming than if I could just put a normal bug report together with a screenshot.
archontes 9y ago
And thus you see the supreme importance of never having the public find out you've ever, even once, locked someone out without recourse.
- themacguffinman 9y ago
  What about the importance of understanding what a business support agreement is?
  - imron 9y ago
    Let's say for arguments sake, you have a business support agreement and then it comes out in the news that your business (or maybe just a rogue employee) has done something horribly racist or sexist. Maybe not even racist or sexist, but that something that gets blown out of all proportion and so people think what happened was racist or sexist. The twitter mobs are baying for your blood. Some Employees inside Google might also be baying for your blood. Will Google decide to end the business support agreement, and would you bet your business on the answer to that question being 'no'?
chris_wot 9y ago
The company I work for uses Google extensively. Simple stuff like Google Admin is abominably slow, and important things we need like Google Groups are, to be frank, rubbish. Google Docs is OK, but Google Sheets is abysmal for any serious amount of data. It seems very hard to have Google listen to our concerns.
- chris_wot 9y ago
  It's sad I'm being downvoted for speaking about our experience using Google. I work for a major Australian company and we dove right into Google. I'm not entirely negative about it, lots of it is great, but there are still significant gaps.
  - dijit 9y ago
    Your comment is/was not necessarily relevant to the more political issue of being forcibly removed from having access to your data with absolutely no way of recovering it.
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    I think you're just being downvoted for being off-topic. This part of the thread's about how trustworthy Google is as a host, and the likelihood of being locked out of your account for some arcane reason, and a discussion of the merits and flaws of their products doesn't fit in smoothly.
  - mnglkhn2 9y ago
    His comment is relevant as to how would a new product be perceived through the experience had with other products offered by the same company.
- foxylad 9y ago
  Interesting. I guess it depends on your definition of "serious amount of data". Our entire accounting system is built on Google Sheets, including about ten thousand transactions in four currencies per financial year. The system summarises by country and cost centre, and has sheets that provide our current profit and loss, and nice things like all the fields in each of the tax forms we have to complete. OK, we are a small organisation, but I'm happy to recommend Google Sheets to anyone but power users. If you are crunching a lot more data than this, then I certainly agree that using a browser-based spreadsheet is not optimal.
cm2187 9y ago
Yep. And that's called a reputation.
imron 9y ago
The problem with destroying trust is that it's really hard to rebuild it. You can introduce missing pieces and support all you like, but if people think they can't trust you based on your previous history, then it won't make a whit of difference.

logicallee 9y ago

Would you pay for an insurance service against this, meaning that if this occurs you get paid out whatever monetary sum you had paid the premium against? (And just so everyone knows, insurance fraud is illegal, can be a felony in all 50 states, and lands you in jail.)[1] It would certainly give peace of mind and the next time we read about 1 person in 10 million facing such a problem, we can think, "maybe they should have just paid $10 in insurance." As a public service the insurer could also publish rates of lockout. I've had this idea for some time, so if you want it you need to reply with a resounding, yes, you'd pay for it. For the record, I'd pay for it. But I need to find 9 million other people too. [1] I'm not a lawyer or even actuary.

rocqua 9y ago
I'd pay, given I have enough trust. I'd also be happy to e.g. half my payout for legal assistance in retrieving whatever access was taken away. The issue I see is, what happens when a spam-account gets blocked? And how do you keep people who knowingly break e.g. google policy from forming the majority of your customers.
- logicallee 9y ago
  Thanks, but your and the other reply weren't enough :)
mdpopescu 9y ago
Unfortunately, people lie - even to themselves. The only way to see if such a service is viable is to actually offer it. [And for the record - yes, definitely.]
- logicallee 9y ago
  thanks, but your and the other reply weren't enough :)
hobarrera 9y ago
Given that google doesn't usually accurately describe why accounts are closed, such an insurance company would never be able to prove insurance fraud and be completely exposed to it.