9 ms·

Historically if Google wrongs you, the only ways to get it fixed are: 1. Get lucky and some googler sees your official bug report 2. Know a googler who can fi

Historically if Google wrongs you, the only ways to get it fixed are: 1. Get lucky and some googler sees your official bug report 2. Know a googler who can file a bug internally 3. Make noise on social media till someone at Google notices

kevingadd 8y ago
Also keep in mind that most Googlers can't change anything anyway
- dman 8y ago
  Thats why they have Jeff Dean! He can change everything. Disclaimer: This message does not reflect the views of my employer.
  - Operyl 8y ago
    Kind of in poor taste given what your employer has done to block the Archive Team (in this thread at least).
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- smt88 8y ago
  This is, frustratingly, false. They have access to internal customer support that you can't even pay for as an external user. It's fucking infuriating. My brother is disabled and hadn't logged into his Gmail account for a few months. I helped him log in, which somehow triggered some kind of security system. It thought we were hacking the account. We got stuck in an infinite loop of "verify your 2FA, answer personal questions, wait for customer support to review the situation, repeat". It was hellish. We tried over and over again for months to get back in. I still even had access to the Gmail account that sent him the original invite. But when no human will review the situation, you can't break out of the loop. The only way we got his email account back was by talking to one of my friends who works at Google.
  - frutiger 8y ago
    Were you (or your brother) paying for his Gmail service?
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      It doesn't matter. We already know google will lock out paid accounts without the ability to talk to a human.
      - frutiger 8y ago
        It does matter. Expecting something for free is exactly what leads to being ghosted, whether by a person (see the lament of the GNOME Calendar maintainer that was up here earlier) or a company.
        macintux 8y ago
        I’m confused. What did his brother expect other than adequate user support? If you can’t support a service, don’t offer it.
        Dylan16807 8y ago
        They do the same thing to paid accounts. How can I be clearer.
        frutiger 8y ago
        Providing some data comparing relative rates of such incidents of paid vs. free customers would be a start. Repeating something does not make it clearer nor more convincing.
        Dylan16807 8y ago
        The claim is that you can't even pay for good support. The relative badness between paid and free is irrelevant. Have you honestly never seen one of the stories about how badly google treats paying customers, and specifically how automated it all is? I can do the job of searching that if you need me to, but I'm not going to argue about free vs. paid because that's not the topic at hand.
- dmitrygr 8y ago
  But they can log an internal bug or send an outraged email to eng-misc@, which often helps.
joecool1029 8y ago
Oh, you forgot the best way to get a response! Spam emails to common names @google.com.
- mherdeg 8y ago
  Do you have any firsthand experience trying this strategy? This sounds kind of genius.
  - joecool1029 8y ago
    No, I learned about the tactic from a security researcher's blog. Google wasn't responding (as usual) so he started to poke common names and finally got a response. We have our own internal list in case we have a major issue. It's just something we keep in the toolchest that's cheaper (and faster!) than poking the lawyer or relying on a blog post to go viral. They don't want to act like a normal company with regular support and escalation channels, so we have no intention of treating them like a normal company.
rohan1024 8y ago
I've uploaded a lot of data to Google(mostly photos) and someday if Google decides that I'm in violation of their policy and chooses to lock me out of system I'm screwed. I need to start thinking about proper storage system for my pictures and other data.
- torgian 8y ago
  I use hard drives.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  One of the initiatives to come out of this is to try to raise awareness, and tool availability, for doing just this. Though local control of your own data, plus reliable and secure off-site replication, helps a lot. I'm strongly partial to git-based publishing tools -- SSGs and markdown hosted on the site of my choice, though GitLab and GitHub are both convenient options. The fact that everything is in Git makes rehoming vastly simpler. And I've been bit a few times too many by service shutdowns, with about three consequential projects still in process (the earliest, Readability's shutdown, is over 2 years ago, and I'm still digging out).
- 0815test 8y ago
  To be fair, Google does allow access to your own data via Google Takeout.

kevingadd 8y ago

Also keep in mind that most Googlers can't change anything anyway

dman 8y ago
Thats why they have Jeff Dean! He can change everything. Disclaimer: This message does not reflect the views of my employer.
- Operyl 8y ago
  Kind of in poor taste given what your employer has done to block the Archive Team (in this thread at least).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
smt88 8y ago
This is, frustratingly, false. They have access to internal customer support that you can't even pay for as an external user. It's fucking infuriating. My brother is disabled and hadn't logged into his Gmail account for a few months. I helped him log in, which somehow triggered some kind of security system. It thought we were hacking the account. We got stuck in an infinite loop of "verify your 2FA, answer personal questions, wait for customer support to review the situation, repeat". It was hellish. We tried over and over again for months to get back in. I still even had access to the Gmail account that sent him the original invite. But when no human will review the situation, you can't break out of the loop. The only way we got his email account back was by talking to one of my friends who works at Google.
- frutiger 8y ago
  Were you (or your brother) paying for his Gmail service?
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    It doesn't matter. We already know google will lock out paid accounts without the ability to talk to a human.
    - frutiger 8y ago
      It does matter. Expecting something for free is exactly what leads to being ghosted, whether by a person (see the lament of the GNOME Calendar maintainer that was up here earlier) or a company.
      - macintux 8y ago
        I’m confused. What did his brother expect other than adequate user support? If you can’t support a service, don’t offer it.
      - Dylan16807 8y ago
        They do the same thing to paid accounts. How can I be clearer.
        frutiger 8y ago
        Providing some data comparing relative rates of such incidents of paid vs. free customers would be a start. Repeating something does not make it clearer nor more convincing.
        Dylan16807 8y ago
        The claim is that you can't even pay for good support. The relative badness between paid and free is irrelevant. Have you honestly never seen one of the stories about how badly google treats paying customers, and specifically how automated it all is? I can do the job of searching that if you need me to, but I'm not going to argue about free vs. paid because that's not the topic at hand.
dmitrygr 8y ago
But they can log an internal bug or send an outraged email to eng-misc@, which often helps.

joecool1029 8y ago

Oh, you forgot the best way to get a response! Spam emails to common names @google.com.

mherdeg 8y ago
Do you have any firsthand experience trying this strategy? This sounds kind of genius.
- joecool1029 8y ago
  No, I learned about the tactic from a security researcher's blog. Google wasn't responding (as usual) so he started to poke common names and finally got a response. We have our own internal list in case we have a major issue. It's just something we keep in the toolchest that's cheaper (and faster!) than poking the lawyer or relying on a blog post to go viral. They don't want to act like a normal company with regular support and escalation channels, so we have no intention of treating them like a normal company.

rohan1024 8y ago

I've uploaded a lot of data to Google(mostly photos) and someday if Google decides that I'm in violation of their policy and chooses to lock me out of system I'm screwed. I need to start thinking about proper storage system for my pictures and other data.

torgian 8y ago
I use hard drives.
dredmorbius 8y ago
One of the initiatives to come out of this is to try to raise awareness, and tool availability, for doing just this. Though local control of your own data, plus reliable and secure off-site replication, helps a lot. I'm strongly partial to git-based publishing tools -- SSGs and markdown hosted on the site of my choice, though GitLab and GitHub are both convenient options. The fact that everything is in Git makes rehoming vastly simpler. And I've been bit a few times too many by service shutdowns, with about three consequential projects still in process (the earliest, Readability's shutdown, is over 2 years ago, and I'm still digging out).
0815test 8y ago
To be fair, Google does allow access to your own data via Google Takeout.