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> The part I don't get is... where in Google leadership does this issue get lost on the company's priorities? Of all of the rational explanations I can come up

> The part I don't get is... where in Google leadership does this issue get lost on the company's priorities? Of all of the rational explanations I can come up with, it feels like someone looks at the data and either says "nah we don't lose much money from this" or "nah it's not a real problem". Is that actually true? Could it be something to do with company culture? Something like "if we solve a hard problem by assigning a human to it then we have admitted failure as a technology company". It's a lofty goal but it comes at the cost of betraying the trust of partners/customers when things break, and they seem to break often. Someone in management really ought to be weighing those two things side by side (assuming the cultural thing I mentioned even exists).

catach 8y ago
Human-based support at Google-scale is also insanely expensive.
- sam_goody 8y ago
  If they weren't taking mone from each of their app developers, that might be an argument. But when you are making Google scale profits, which are INSANELY high, than you can afford the humans to provide support. And if you don't, than your monopoly should be broken by the government. And Apple's high end garden barely scratches Google's monopoly.
- benologist 8y ago
  Do you think it would cost them more than it costs AT&T or Comcast, who don't have $100 billion in savings between them but do offer phone support to about 200 million people? What happens if Google provides support is their average revenue per employee drops from $1.3m to an even million per year or whatever and their profit margins remain immense and that $100b+ in the bank keeps on growing. But it is certainly more expensive than an auto-emailer faking support.
- munchbunny 8y ago
  It's not that black and white. There's "no support", "lots of support", and somewhere in between is "more than what Google has right now." I think that, when you are the gatekeepers to some people's livelihoods, there's some amount of ethical responsibility to exercise judgement. If you can automate judgement, then great, but if you can't, you should probably implement it with humans.
- 6nf 8y ago
  Apple support is legendary and they're pretty big

catach 8y ago

Human-based support at Google-scale is also insanely expensive.

sam_goody 8y ago
If they weren't taking mone from each of their app developers, that might be an argument. But when you are making Google scale profits, which are INSANELY high, than you can afford the humans to provide support. And if you don't, than your monopoly should be broken by the government. And Apple's high end garden barely scratches Google's monopoly.
benologist 8y ago
Do you think it would cost them more than it costs AT&T or Comcast, who don't have $100 billion in savings between them but do offer phone support to about 200 million people? What happens if Google provides support is their average revenue per employee drops from $1.3m to an even million per year or whatever and their profit margins remain immense and that $100b+ in the bank keeps on growing. But it is certainly more expensive than an auto-emailer faking support.
munchbunny 8y ago
It's not that black and white. There's "no support", "lots of support", and somewhere in between is "more than what Google has right now." I think that, when you are the gatekeepers to some people's livelihoods, there's some amount of ethical responsibility to exercise judgement. If you can automate judgement, then great, but if you can't, you should probably implement it with humans.
6nf 8y ago
Apple support is legendary and they're pretty big