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Google gave our business listing to a competitor

590 points by benryon 6y ago

pacifika 6y ago
This matters because there’s a monopoly in the market.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
labster 6y ago
Once again, HN is the last-resort customer support line for Google. Oh well, upvoted. Embarrassing the company is the only way to get any slightly complex issue resolved.
- jdm2212 6y ago
  I was (briefly) on a Maps-adjacent team at Google circa 2015. From the outside, you just can't imagine how few Google engineers are responsible for how many products and data integrations. One example: back then it was a dozen people (literally) responsible for every single business's hours, category, and more for all of planet Earth. They automate the crap out of it and the automation mostly works (scrape structured data off websites, Google My Business, various aggregators, etc.) but it means there's no conceivable way you could provide customer support that will keep up with the volume of support requests because the support requests often ultimately have to get routed to an engineer... and there are only a dozen engineers on the team that owns stuffing all this data into Maps. And those engineers are supposed to be doing mostly feature work. Over time accuracy got better, but 95% accuracy, to say nothing of 99.9% accuracy, is unachievable to the point of being a non-goal. One of this team's bigger time sucks was just other Google engineers complaining about inaccurate data. Someone would go to their favorite restaurant, notice the hours were off, or the business category was wrong, and file a ticket. Then the team would sometimes manually edit the listing to fix it. Sometimes they'd say "no, you have to deal with the same shitty data as all our customers". But that was just the requests coming in from a few thousand users who had access to the internal ticket system and new which component to file stuff under. (Incidentally: this is the origin of the Maps feature where you can now just directly edit a listing and if other users, agree, it gets published.) So, yeah, there isn't really a scalable way to manage support requests. But HN works for some subset of cases, and I too upvote the cases that get complained about here. EDIT: accuracy in the raw data was pretty bad but on a view-weighted basis it was pretty respectable IIRC (>90%). Turns out most people on Maps are looking at the same small subset of establishments, so you have to get those right even if that means making choices that reduce accuracy on other listings.
  - ta17711771 6y ago
    > you just can't imagine how few Google engineers are responsible for how many products and data integrations. I mean, I've seen understaffed, shitty-service companies since I was a kid. How is this unique? Fuck them all.
    - snoshy 6y ago
      A lot of times, I would agree with you. In this case though, things might be a bit different. I'm not sure if you agree, but Google Maps has revolutionized physical location for a large portion of people today. Democratizing a thing mainly involves scaling it, and scaling things rapidly is a difficult task. Having only a few qualified people ready for a task of this magnitude is not surprising to me.
      - pdonis 6y ago
        > Having only a few qualified people ready for a task of this magnitude is not surprising to me. So what you're saying is, there is this hugely valuable application that has "revolutionized" things for a large fraction of the population, but it's perfectly normal that Google can't be bothered to put more than a piddly number of people on it? If it's really that valuable, Google should not handle it in this half-assed fashion. They should charge money for it, just like any other business that has something it knows is hugely valuable to a large number of people. But instead, they prefer to sell everyone's eyeballs to advertisers. How does this make sense?
        anchpop 6y ago
        Something I think is underappreciated is that if something is supported by ads instead of a subscription, then it is more accessible to people who don't have very much money. Google used to run a program called Contributor which let you pay them the minimum amount you'd have to to opt out of ads (you basically just paid them and they used your money to automatically outbid everyone who wanted to advertise to you). I wish they brought this back because I really liked it. They changed it completely so it only worked with "participating sites" [0], which was basically nobody, then killed it altogether (but left the page up). [0]: https://contributor.google.com/v/beta https://contributor.google.com/v/beta
- technick 6y ago
  Someone ported out my google voice number after getting my business card at DC24. I couldn't get anyone at google to help me out. Finally went thru my contacts on linkedin, found a guy I used to work with who was at google now. He was able to get someone to contact me at google about the issue and I got my number back.
- tyoma 6y ago
  I am half serious: maybe HN needs a “tech support” feaute, kind of like “show hn” and “ask hn” exist now. If people are going to use HN for last-ditch tech support, there should at least be an official method.
  - petargyurov 6y ago
    The only reason it works is _because_ it's unofficial. As soon as it becomes an official offering nobody will go there to upvote things. Besides, this is so far from HN's purpose that nobody should even be considering adding this feature.
- diggan 6y ago
  Yes, everyone who deals with Google keeps hitting this issue over and over again. It's impossible to get help for certain things. Two cases: I have a bar/restuarant where we been waiting for the verification codes for over two months now. Been trying five times to receive the verification codes for "Google My Business". No one is receiving the codes, there is no other verification codes, emails go unanswered and there is no other way of contacting a human over at Google. Our business still has outdated details and we can get no control over it. Second case is a friend who has a store next to a market. Someone added their phone number to the market, so since about a year ago, people phone her thinking she is the market, asking for information. She receives at least one call a day and have been trying to remove her number from the market since it happened the first time. She also tried everything, but to no avail. It's so frustrating to deal with, but there is really no alternative...
- mylons 6y ago
  google is a monopoly. they do not have to have customer service. break them up.
  - dontblink 6y ago
    Yelp exists? Just because a service is popular does not make it a monopoly. Google should be free to deal with their properties as they see fit. If there is a degradation of quality, that gives others such as Microsoft, Yelp, etc the ability to capitalize.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
      > Just because a service is popular does not make it a monopoly. True; what makes them a monopoly is that they use their dominance in one market (web search) to make themselves "unfairly" dominant in other areas (maps). > If there is a degradation of quality, that gives others such as Microsoft, Yelp, etc the ability to capitalize. Except that others are handicapped by Google. Example: Average customer wants to look up a business. So, they open their browser (Chrome, 70% of market) and search, which will go to Google because that's the default (ironically, using their dominance of browsers to push their web search), and search for the business, which will then pop up a nice big box at the top showing results from Google Maps. Of course, maybe Google Maps has bad data and Yelp has better data, but since Yelp isn't a Google product it'll be at best somewhere down in the normal web results, not pushed front and center. Monopolies are not about market share; they're about what you do with that market share.
Arainach 6y ago
This Reddit Comment describes what's happening here well: https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/gtexcj/google_gave_away_our_business_listing_to_a/fscjgyp/ https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/gtexcj/google_gave_... >The core reason it happened... this place doesn't qualify to be on the map in the first place and it thus confuses the system. >The secondary reason... the name of a feature is supposed to be the name and nothing more. >A real estate agency qualifies to be on the map. Google also lets certain professionals to be on the map, with realtors being one such professional. >This is neither of those, this is a "team". It's not allowed on the map anymore than the team or shift I'm on at my job. >Here's the exterior. As you can see the name of the agency is "Summit Sotheby's International Realty", that's on the map at https://goo.gl/maps/cVEtvvRqCnJq5aEJ8 https://goo.gl/maps/cVEtvvRqCnJq5aEJ8. >Other than the agency, all that then qualifies to be at this location are listings for individual realtors. So a listing that says "Cindy Wallace" and nothing more in the title is allowed. Instead we have her trying to keyword stuff her listing with Park City Utah Real Estate - Cindy Wallace Team. She also uses the category of Real Estate Agency when she isn't one, she needs to use the Real Estate Agents category. Probably doesn't work the trend of trying to represent your "team" as it's own agency. >It's pretty common for people to not follow the rules and then complain that the algorithms don't do what they want. Follow the rules and the algorithms will then work.
- pdonis 6y ago
  If what this reddit comment is saying is correct, it seems to me to mean that Google's business reviews are unreliable information. The complaint is not that "The Fisher Group" should be on the map instead of "Summit Sotheby's". The complaint is that reviews which used to be attached to one agent (Stan/Ben Fisher) are now attached to a different agent (Cindy Wallace). Apparently this happened because two different Google Business accounts (one that Stan/Ben Fisher had had for years, and one that Cindy Wallace just created) got merged into one. That seems to me to be a problem for two reasons: (1) How can Google not comprehend the idea of multiple business accounts at the same address? (2) How can Google merge a newly created Google Business account with one that has existed for years without checking with the owner of the one that has existed for years? Saying "well, the person who set up the new account made a mistake" is not a good answer. Of course, AFAIK these people aren't paying Google, so to Google they're not customers, they're just users whose data Google wants to sell. But maybe if enough people get the idea that Google is simply incapable of providing accurate data on businesses and reviews, and stop depending on Google for that information, and word of that gets around, Google might start thinking that maybe they need to do something. (Not that I'll be holding my breath.)
nitinreddy88 6y ago
I think, We haven't seen single week in 2020, where Google didn't fail to make it front page for worst customer support and for their evil practices.
- jldugger 6y ago
  Except when the headline says 'competitor' the truth seems to be 'coworker'.
  - Can_Not 6y ago
    Except in their industry they are still competitors even if they've chosen to be co-workers to save on costs like office space and marketing.
    - jldugger 6y ago
      In a sense, everyone is. Want that promotion? Better be going 'above and beyond.' Even just choosing who to lay off is competitive.
- izacus 6y ago
  Yes, on Reddit that's called a circle jerk. Before that it was Uber, Facebook, Microsoft, Linux, you name it.
  - Can_Not 6y ago
    You can't just call everyone who notices something a "circle jerk" without any further elaboration or substance.
    - freshbob 6y ago
      I don't think you know what a "circle jerk" is. Hint: it's not a jerk who likes circles.
- jaclaz 6y ago
cryptica 6y ago
One of the main problems with these giant mega corporation is that they don't have the bandwidth to interact with people and there is no recourse for people when things to wrong. Corporations are negligent by design and the worst part is that the government allows them to keep sweeping problems under the carpet at no cost to them. Because of their scale, corporations are harming millions of people in thousands of different ways through their neglect but because the level of neglect is subtle when mentioned in a court room setting, these corporations are not being punished for the real damage that they cause.
- diggan 6y ago
  This is not a "giant mega corporation" issue, it's a Google issue, because they simply do not prioritize customer support at all. Now I'm neither an Apple fan nor Microsoft fan (don't like their business decisions at all), but I have been required to deal with their customer support at times. It's actually possible to get your hands on a real human to get support, so you can solve stuff. The same cannot be said for Google.
  - elcomet 6y ago
    It is, because they have almost a monopoly on maps. Apple maps can be an alternative, but only to iOS users, which is far from the majority of people on earth. So they don't actually need to prioritize customer support. Why would they, there is no real alternative ?
  - tempodox 6y ago
    They literally own half the internet but they are too cheap to give any kind of support to paying customers. What is all the technical excellence good for when they're unwilling and unable to present a human face?
  - izacus 6y ago
    > Now I'm neither an Apple fan nor Microsoft fan (don't like their business decisions at all), but I have been required to deal with their customer support at times. It's actually possible to get your hands on a real human to get support, so you can solve stuff. Did you actually get customer support for Apple Maps? Because they've been completely ignoring my updates to their mistakes in my area and have been pretty much the same as Google in that respect. Except that at least Google Maps are correct.
ddrt 6y ago
God damn remove this spam. What the fuck.
jakozaur 6y ago
The current internet giants got huge monopolistic like power that many dictators of many countries would envy. The set their rules, execute them, and judge them. Even having a decent map listing is sometimes make it or break it in competitive industries such as hotels or restaurants. I believe once you become a platform there should be an independent nano-courthouse where you can appeal. Today being rejected or having listing hijacked on Apple, Amazon, or Google platform is equivalent to the economical death penalty for many individuals. It should be possible to pay $100 by individuals and appeal to an independent nano-courthouse if the original platform rejects or blocks you. If you win, the appeal fee is refunded and the platform has to cover the cost. If you lose, your $100 is gone.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  I believe that article 17 introduced something like this in UE for YouTube?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
krisgenre 6y ago
"Google Offers No Help" Even though I love Google, this is increasingly getting scary. More than hackers getting into my account, I am actually more afraid of getting locked out by Google one day. An year or so back I created a Google account for my five year old daughter to be used on a Nexus 7 2012 (yes, it still works). Recently, I reset the device and tried logging in with my daughter's account but had forgotten the password. In spite of giving the recovery address correctly and entering the OTP that was sent, Google kept telling me it couldn't confirm if I was the owner of the account. Since this is a new account I don't have a problem but what if this happened to my main account?
habosa 6y ago
Disclaimer: I work at Google but not on Maps and am speaking for myself, not my employer. I am normally very sympathetic to HN complaints about Google customer service. They're normally about Cloud or GSuite, this one is a bit different. Does anyone here think it would actually be possible to have a free (or even cheap) comprehensive maps service that also has customer support? How many dedicated support people would you need to make fair human decisions about every place, road, and business in the entire world? Maps are just really really hard, especially as we expect them to be so much more than the simple maps they replaced. It's a database of everything there is to do in the world. And we don't pay a dime.
- detaro 6y ago
  I don't know, then maybe add paid listing support? (Or don't push your product through search and OS dominance so better quality alternatives have at least a theoretical chance?)
- bberenberg 6y ago
  How is it free? Google sells advertisements on Maps. This is a business customer that Google tries to convert into a paying advertiser, not a random consumer. Google Maps is also a paid API product.
- grumple 6y ago
  Doesn't google charge for business use of maps, and charge for advertising within maps? Cost of support should be included in those costs.
  - Craighead 6y ago
    No cost for business listing.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  I hope it's not controversial to say that if your ambitions are to be the whole world's middle man on something, you have some responsibilities regarding how to do it. Google doesn't have a "hey, these are scraped and only have like 80% accuracy" disclaimer or anything like that when they direct customers to businesses. I don't know where the line is but Google has some level of basic ethical requirement to not try to be the middleman when their failures (or in google terms >80% accuracy) cost others rather than themselves. It's presented as correct, not as a best guess. I get that it's impossible to be 100% correct at this scale, but then just don't present it as authoritative. Or let people correct mistakes that are harming them. Or something besides just driving traffic to their own product and saying there's nothing they could do.
jand 6y ago
I do not know for sure if this is related, but it definitly tastes the same: Back in 2010 [1] I logged into google using chrome on my mother's device. Removed the account from the device afterwards. Today, many devices later, we still were not able to stop my mother from receiving autofill entries, contacts and such originating from my account. Long story short: I am tried to vouch for the existance of non-layer-8 trouble leading to "shared accounts". Neverending fun. [1]: maybe 2012
ianhorn 6y ago
The discussion here is largely about how it's impossible to be really correct at Google scale, and this is something that terrifies me about where the industry is going. When there's a task that can be done by people, we can always correct issues. Going down to 99% correct could also mean cutting costs by like 90% through automation, so the business is going to be happy, except that now there's no one for the consumer to turn to but the bots when things go wrong. In the future, if your name is Scunthorpe [0], you're out of luck, because it's impossible to not have these issues at scale, and apparently scale is inevitable. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
- dkersten 6y ago
  The “x is impossible at google scale” (where x usually means customer support but in this case information correctness) argument falls flat to me. If x is impossible at their scale, then their scale needs to be cut back. Companies shouldn’t be allowed to be so large and all-encompassing and monopolistic that they negatively impact society because x is impossible at that scale.
  - acituan 6y ago
    You’re right. Yet currently there is one major normativity in action and that is the normativity of the market. Market rewwards economies of scale and monopolies more than anything else. Unfortunately there is no working institution left to bring in the normativity of societal good for balance. One might hope for state to make a move, but big tech pays the most lobbying money currently, so I wouldn’t hold my breath.
    - dkersten 6y ago
      > so I wouldn’t hold my breath Of course. I agree that market pressure is pushing companies that way and there's little that can stop it now. But that still doesn't make the excuse a good one, certainly not for us, the people.
remote_phone 6y ago
At this point Google has a monopoly on the search business. When their algorithms hurt a business when you try to search for it, and they are not willing to change it or help, why is this not libel? They should be responsible for supporting this monopoly, and they should have competent support people that can either explain what’s going on or can fix it. They have neither and businesses really do suffer. I think a class action lawsuit should be started against Google until they start investing in support services and that can adequately fix mistakes. If not a class action lawsuit, then I fully support legislation and regulation that forces them to spend on support. This has happened so many times across so many of their platforms, it’s obvious what they are doing. They have created a monopoly and then their entire ecosystem depends on them, but they spend almost nothing to support their ecosystem. That’s how they remain so profitable.
- Traster 6y ago
  >why is this not libel? Is this not just a straight up section 230 instance? They're just displaying user generated content.
EGreg 6y ago
I am one of those commenters that sees everyone describing the same problem in different ways, for decades, and nothing getting done. The problem is centralization. The solution is open source alternatives. The issue is far beyond Google, or Facebook. It has to do with us being used to renting software from server farms far away. To tying infrastructure to control over data. To having large corporations that own the infrastructure be in the middle of all our searches, transactions, data hosting, relationships, conversations etc. If we don’tdo anything with open source, we will keep pearl clutching in 5, 10 years. When it came to voice conversations, we completey rethought the topology of phone company operators connecting circuits and moved to packet switching and VoIP. This led to a precipitious drop in prices. There was a time that a phone company was considered a canonical example of natural monopoly. No longer. And the costs went to zero, along with their power over your calls. We need to completely rethink the topology of the Web. And eventually that includes DNS, which is a glorified search engine. There are projects out there that are doing something about all this. Up til now you may agree with me. But now I mention that my company is extremely far along in doing just that, and you can grab the source code for free, or get involved by emailing me. I post a link and that’s when I will probably get downvoted. I am not sure why, but my best guess is that it is for “shilling” real free open source solutions to this problem instead of just talking about it: https://qbix.com/blog/2019/03/08/how-qbix-platform-can-change-the-world/ https://qbix.com/blog/2019/03/08/how-qbix-platform-can-chang... (I mention the downvotes because it happens every time I link to more info aboutthe software. I’d love to have a substantive conversation with the people downvoting, understand what I can do better. Please try to leave a comment if you think I’m doing something you’d rather I not do.) (EDIT: Well, that didn’t take long. The downvotes are always silent. It’s almost like there’s a cabal out there determined to bury any mention of decentralization, but who intentionally wants avoid any discussion.)
- yowlingcat 6y ago
  > It’s almost like there’s a cabal out there Please stop doing this. As per the guidlines(https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html): > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data. People are downvoting you in good faith, and they're trying to disagree with you and send a message. If we look at your comment history, your comments are you plugging your own personal project. And you keep getting downvoted because you are hijacking the conversation and redirecting it to something you built, that people did not explicitly ask for or express interest in. And so when you keep doing that, people will feel like it's spam. To make matters worse, instead of taking the subtle cue of a downvote to mean that you're doing something wrong, you seem to deny that and instead conspiratorially deflect blame and personal responsibility towards someone else. My suggestion is to submit your product as a new post. If people do not express interest in it, that indicates an issue with how you have designed your product, or marketed and positioned it. Take the reception that you get there, whatever it is, in good faith. It's clear you have a lot of ideas around your project and what motivated it that pertain to society at large. That leads me to my second suggestion: Try to consider what your values and beliefs are and how you would respond if you were not working on this project. This is your null hypothesis. Try to think about your project the same way others will, which is that without momentum it will likely fail. Make conversation based on that. And then, if you find that people are interested in what your values are that lead you to start this project, maybe after they express interest, gently plug your project. But if you try and shove something people want down other people's throats, you're just going to alienate others and drive them away. And then your project will fail, as it should, because you didn't build something that people truly wanted.
legohead 6y ago
Searched for lawyer both in the post and this comment section and got nothing. You'd be surprised what a lawyer can accomplish, even with no real law backing you up. You want an actual response from Google? Get a lawyer involved...
- Glyptodon 6y ago
  That's actually another problem in itself. You shouldn't need a lawyer just to be given the time of day when there's a problem.
jlokier 6y ago
Some may be sympathetic to Google not providing enough customer support for tricky issues. But here's a much simpler problem I've had. I have a Google My Business account which was long ago properly authorized and verified for a business at a particular location. Verified by landline phone, photos, etc. One day some random member of the public put in some incorrect information. I didn't notice the change for about 6 months. Now, even though I created, control, have verified etc, the Google My Business account for that data, and theoretically I'm the only person with that level of control over the business listing... I'm "not authorised" to correct the information via Google My Business itself. Wtf?! Isn't that what it is for? I can still login to Google My Business. I can edit some fields - I'm still regarded as the authority for sensitive things like phone number. So they haven't removed my special status (nobody else can edit the phone number). Rather, some things in Google My Business which are editable fields and the UI invites me to edit, give "not authorised" when I submit. That was surprising, I thought I was the authority. After trying every option, I tried Google's online support from Google My Business. It said I'd get a response in a few days; in reality it took longer than a month to get a terse and useless reply. I sent a few messages in that time, basically asking "is there anyone there"? Eventually I did speak with someone at Google about this. They told me that I needed to go through the whole "prove your business is what you say it is and not what a random member of the public said it is" verification rigmarole all over again, with photos, etc. In the circumstances I was not able to do so (I wasn't on site enough any more, and our office wasn't as visually distinctive any more). I'm asking myself, what is the point of a verified Google My Business account if randoms can override the business owner and lock them out anyway??! That was last time. Before that, it took 2 years to remove an incorrect address and location for the business. I don't think that can be put down to "limited staff for customer support". I put it down to poor & misleading system design. What is the point in telling people to get, verify and maintain Google My Business account, only to subtly not mention that it still isn't authoritative data for your listing, and the owner may get overridden by randoms. Probably without noticing for a long time.
stevespang 6y ago
When that happens you call your lawyers and sue the beejezus out of them . . . .
AlleUndKalle 6y ago
This is gross!
croh 6y ago
This is the reason I hate google. No customer support at all. They will just provide link to forum. I will go with Microsoft anytime for business software than Google. I feel like it is company built by nerds with zero business sense. If your KPI depends on building new products, there ain't a reason to improve existing ones. Classic case of Goodhart's law.
- tech-historian 6y ago
  It's not like Microsoft is pure as the driven snow, either. It's a massive corporation with all sorts of warts. Just to name a few from the past few months: WinGet fiasco: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/28/21272964/microsoft-winget-windows-package-manager-appget-copied https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/28/21272964/microsoft-winget... O365 Installer forces Bing as search default: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/22/21077280/microsoft-chrome-bing-extension-office-365-proplus-installer-default-search-engine https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/22/21077280/microsoft-chrome... Azure jacks up prices in sneaky ways: https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/microsoft-screws-customers-and-its-own-advocates-alike/ https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/microsoft-screws-customer... MS ends partner benefits: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/11/microsofts_reasons_for_ending_free_licenses_for_partners/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/11/microsofts_reasons_... Closes eBooks store, customers lose all purchased books: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47810367 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47810367 Microsoft partners with ICE for facial recognition and other technology: https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-employees-up-in-arms-over-cloud-contract-with-1826927803 https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-employees-up-in-arms-over-clou... etc etc etc.
anthuswilliams 6y ago
I know that this makes it to the front page because it is symptomatic of frustrating and frightening things that affect society as a whole. I won't comment on those things because I don't know the answers. But insofar as you want to solve your particular problem, there is a simple answer that seems not to have been suggested here. Get a lawyer and sue them!

590 points by benryon 6y ago

pacifika 6y ago

This matters because there’s a monopoly in the market.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

labster 6y ago

Once again, HN is the last-resort customer support line for Google. Oh well, upvoted. Embarrassing the company is the only way to get any slightly complex issue resolved.

jdm2212 6y ago
I was (briefly) on a Maps-adjacent team at Google circa 2015. From the outside, you just can't imagine how few Google engineers are responsible for how many products and data integrations. One example: back then it was a dozen people (literally) responsible for every single business's hours, category, and more for all of planet Earth. They automate the crap out of it and the automation mostly works (scrape structured data off websites, Google My Business, various aggregators, etc.) but it means there's no conceivable way you could provide customer support that will keep up with the volume of support requests because the support requests often ultimately have to get routed to an engineer... and there are only a dozen engineers on the team that owns stuffing all this data into Maps. And those engineers are supposed to be doing mostly feature work. Over time accuracy got better, but 95% accuracy, to say nothing of 99.9% accuracy, is unachievable to the point of being a non-goal. One of this team's bigger time sucks was just other Google engineers complaining about inaccurate data. Someone would go to their favorite restaurant, notice the hours were off, or the business category was wrong, and file a ticket. Then the team would sometimes manually edit the listing to fix it. Sometimes they'd say "no, you have to deal with the same shitty data as all our customers". But that was just the requests coming in from a few thousand users who had access to the internal ticket system and new which component to file stuff under. (Incidentally: this is the origin of the Maps feature where you can now just directly edit a listing and if other users, agree, it gets published.) So, yeah, there isn't really a scalable way to manage support requests. But HN works for some subset of cases, and I too upvote the cases that get complained about here. EDIT: accuracy in the raw data was pretty bad but on a view-weighted basis it was pretty respectable IIRC (>90%). Turns out most people on Maps are looking at the same small subset of establishments, so you have to get those right even if that means making choices that reduce accuracy on other listings.
- ta17711771 6y ago
  > you just can't imagine how few Google engineers are responsible for how many products and data integrations. I mean, I've seen understaffed, shitty-service companies since I was a kid. How is this unique? Fuck them all.
  - snoshy 6y ago
    A lot of times, I would agree with you. In this case though, things might be a bit different. I'm not sure if you agree, but Google Maps has revolutionized physical location for a large portion of people today. Democratizing a thing mainly involves scaling it, and scaling things rapidly is a difficult task. Having only a few qualified people ready for a task of this magnitude is not surprising to me.
    - pdonis 6y ago
      > Having only a few qualified people ready for a task of this magnitude is not surprising to me. So what you're saying is, there is this hugely valuable application that has "revolutionized" things for a large fraction of the population, but it's perfectly normal that Google can't be bothered to put more than a piddly number of people on it? If it's really that valuable, Google should not handle it in this half-assed fashion. They should charge money for it, just like any other business that has something it knows is hugely valuable to a large number of people. But instead, they prefer to sell everyone's eyeballs to advertisers. How does this make sense?
      - anchpop 6y ago
        Something I think is underappreciated is that if something is supported by ads instead of a subscription, then it is more accessible to people who don't have very much money. Google used to run a program called Contributor which let you pay them the minimum amount you'd have to to opt out of ads (you basically just paid them and they used your money to automatically outbid everyone who wanted to advertise to you). I wish they brought this back because I really liked it. They changed it completely so it only worked with "participating sites" [0], which was basically nobody, then killed it altogether (but left the page up). [0]: https://contributor.google.com/v/beta https://contributor.google.com/v/beta
technick 6y ago
Someone ported out my google voice number after getting my business card at DC24. I couldn't get anyone at google to help me out. Finally went thru my contacts on linkedin, found a guy I used to work with who was at google now. He was able to get someone to contact me at google about the issue and I got my number back.
tyoma 6y ago
I am half serious: maybe HN needs a “tech support” feaute, kind of like “show hn” and “ask hn” exist now. If people are going to use HN for last-ditch tech support, there should at least be an official method.
- petargyurov 6y ago
  The only reason it works is _because_ it's unofficial. As soon as it becomes an official offering nobody will go there to upvote things. Besides, this is so far from HN's purpose that nobody should even be considering adding this feature.
diggan 6y ago
Yes, everyone who deals with Google keeps hitting this issue over and over again. It's impossible to get help for certain things. Two cases: I have a bar/restuarant where we been waiting for the verification codes for over two months now. Been trying five times to receive the verification codes for "Google My Business". No one is receiving the codes, there is no other verification codes, emails go unanswered and there is no other way of contacting a human over at Google. Our business still has outdated details and we can get no control over it. Second case is a friend who has a store next to a market. Someone added their phone number to the market, so since about a year ago, people phone her thinking she is the market, asking for information. She receives at least one call a day and have been trying to remove her number from the market since it happened the first time. She also tried everything, but to no avail. It's so frustrating to deal with, but there is really no alternative...
mylons 6y ago
google is a monopoly. they do not have to have customer service. break them up.
- dontblink 6y ago
  Yelp exists? Just because a service is popular does not make it a monopoly. Google should be free to deal with their properties as they see fit. If there is a degradation of quality, that gives others such as Microsoft, Yelp, etc the ability to capitalize.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    > Just because a service is popular does not make it a monopoly. True; what makes them a monopoly is that they use their dominance in one market (web search) to make themselves "unfairly" dominant in other areas (maps). > If there is a degradation of quality, that gives others such as Microsoft, Yelp, etc the ability to capitalize. Except that others are handicapped by Google. Example: Average customer wants to look up a business. So, they open their browser (Chrome, 70% of market) and search, which will go to Google because that's the default (ironically, using their dominance of browsers to push their web search), and search for the business, which will then pop up a nice big box at the top showing results from Google Maps. Of course, maybe Google Maps has bad data and Yelp has better data, but since Yelp isn't a Google product it'll be at best somewhere down in the normal web results, not pushed front and center. Monopolies are not about market share; they're about what you do with that market share.

Arainach 6y ago

This Reddit Comment describes what's happening here well: https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/gtexcj/google_gave_away_our_business_listing_to_a/fscjgyp/ https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/gtexcj/google_gave_... >The core reason it happened... this place doesn't qualify to be on the map in the first place and it thus confuses the system. >The secondary reason... the name of a feature is supposed to be the name and nothing more. >A real estate agency qualifies to be on the map. Google also lets certain professionals to be on the map, with realtors being one such professional. >This is neither of those, this is a "team". It's not allowed on the map anymore than the team or shift I'm on at my job. >Here's the exterior. As you can see the name of the agency is "Summit Sotheby's International Realty", that's on the map at https://goo.gl/maps/cVEtvvRqCnJq5aEJ8 https://goo.gl/maps/cVEtvvRqCnJq5aEJ8. >Other than the agency, all that then qualifies to be at this location are listings for individual realtors. So a listing that says "Cindy Wallace" and nothing more in the title is allowed. Instead we have her trying to keyword stuff her listing with Park City Utah Real Estate - Cindy Wallace Team. She also uses the category of Real Estate Agency when she isn't one, she needs to use the Real Estate Agents category. Probably doesn't work the trend of trying to represent your "team" as it's own agency. >It's pretty common for people to not follow the rules and then complain that the algorithms don't do what they want. Follow the rules and the algorithms will then work.

pdonis 6y ago
If what this reddit comment is saying is correct, it seems to me to mean that Google's business reviews are unreliable information. The complaint is not that "The Fisher Group" should be on the map instead of "Summit Sotheby's". The complaint is that reviews which used to be attached to one agent (Stan/Ben Fisher) are now attached to a different agent (Cindy Wallace). Apparently this happened because two different Google Business accounts (one that Stan/Ben Fisher had had for years, and one that Cindy Wallace just created) got merged into one. That seems to me to be a problem for two reasons: (1) How can Google not comprehend the idea of multiple business accounts at the same address? (2) How can Google merge a newly created Google Business account with one that has existed for years without checking with the owner of the one that has existed for years? Saying "well, the person who set up the new account made a mistake" is not a good answer. Of course, AFAIK these people aren't paying Google, so to Google they're not customers, they're just users whose data Google wants to sell. But maybe if enough people get the idea that Google is simply incapable of providing accurate data on businesses and reviews, and stop depending on Google for that information, and word of that gets around, Google might start thinking that maybe they need to do something. (Not that I'll be holding my breath.)

nitinreddy88 6y ago

I think, We haven't seen single week in 2020, where Google didn't fail to make it front page for worst customer support and for their evil practices.

jldugger 6y ago
Except when the headline says 'competitor' the truth seems to be 'coworker'.
- Can_Not 6y ago
  Except in their industry they are still competitors even if they've chosen to be co-workers to save on costs like office space and marketing.
  - jldugger 6y ago
    In a sense, everyone is. Want that promotion? Better be going 'above and beyond.' Even just choosing who to lay off is competitive.
izacus 6y ago
Yes, on Reddit that's called a circle jerk. Before that it was Uber, Facebook, Microsoft, Linux, you name it.
- Can_Not 6y ago
  You can't just call everyone who notices something a "circle jerk" without any further elaboration or substance.
  - freshbob 6y ago
    I don't think you know what a "circle jerk" is. Hint: it's not a jerk who likes circles.
jaclaz 6y ago

cryptica 6y ago

One of the main problems with these giant mega corporation is that they don't have the bandwidth to interact with people and there is no recourse for people when things to wrong. Corporations are negligent by design and the worst part is that the government allows them to keep sweeping problems under the carpet at no cost to them. Because of their scale, corporations are harming millions of people in thousands of different ways through their neglect but because the level of neglect is subtle when mentioned in a court room setting, these corporations are not being punished for the real damage that they cause.

diggan 6y ago
This is not a "giant mega corporation" issue, it's a Google issue, because they simply do not prioritize customer support at all. Now I'm neither an Apple fan nor Microsoft fan (don't like their business decisions at all), but I have been required to deal with their customer support at times. It's actually possible to get your hands on a real human to get support, so you can solve stuff. The same cannot be said for Google.
- elcomet 6y ago
  It is, because they have almost a monopoly on maps. Apple maps can be an alternative, but only to iOS users, which is far from the majority of people on earth. So they don't actually need to prioritize customer support. Why would they, there is no real alternative ?
- tempodox 6y ago
  They literally own half the internet but they are too cheap to give any kind of support to paying customers. What is all the technical excellence good for when they're unwilling and unable to present a human face?
- izacus 6y ago
  > Now I'm neither an Apple fan nor Microsoft fan (don't like their business decisions at all), but I have been required to deal with their customer support at times. It's actually possible to get your hands on a real human to get support, so you can solve stuff. Did you actually get customer support for Apple Maps? Because they've been completely ignoring my updates to their mistakes in my area and have been pretty much the same as Google in that respect. Except that at least Google Maps are correct.

ddrt 6y ago

God damn remove this spam. What the fuck.

jakozaur 6y ago

The current internet giants got huge monopolistic like power that many dictators of many countries would envy. The set their rules, execute them, and judge them. Even having a decent map listing is sometimes make it or break it in competitive industries such as hotels or restaurants. I believe once you become a platform there should be an independent nano-courthouse where you can appeal. Today being rejected or having listing hijacked on Apple, Amazon, or Google platform is equivalent to the economical death penalty for many individuals. It should be possible to pay $100 by individuals and appeal to an independent nano-courthouse if the original platform rejects or blocks you. If you win, the appeal fee is refunded and the platform has to cover the cost. If you lose, your $100 is gone.

BlueTemplar 6y ago
I believe that article 17 introduced something like this in UE for YouTube?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

krisgenre 6y ago

"Google Offers No Help" Even though I love Google, this is increasingly getting scary. More than hackers getting into my account, I am actually more afraid of getting locked out by Google one day. An year or so back I created a Google account for my five year old daughter to be used on a Nexus 7 2012 (yes, it still works). Recently, I reset the device and tried logging in with my daughter's account but had forgotten the password. In spite of giving the recovery address correctly and entering the OTP that was sent, Google kept telling me it couldn't confirm if I was the owner of the account. Since this is a new account I don't have a problem but what if this happened to my main account?

habosa 6y ago

Disclaimer: I work at Google but not on Maps and am speaking for myself, not my employer. I am normally very sympathetic to HN complaints about Google customer service. They're normally about Cloud or GSuite, this one is a bit different. Does anyone here think it would actually be possible to have a free (or even cheap) comprehensive maps service that also has customer support? How many dedicated support people would you need to make fair human decisions about every place, road, and business in the entire world? Maps are just really really hard, especially as we expect them to be so much more than the simple maps they replaced. It's a database of everything there is to do in the world. And we don't pay a dime.

detaro 6y ago
I don't know, then maybe add paid listing support? (Or don't push your product through search and OS dominance so better quality alternatives have at least a theoretical chance?)
bberenberg 6y ago
How is it free? Google sells advertisements on Maps. This is a business customer that Google tries to convert into a paying advertiser, not a random consumer. Google Maps is also a paid API product.
grumple 6y ago
Doesn't google charge for business use of maps, and charge for advertising within maps? Cost of support should be included in those costs.
- Craighead 6y ago
  No cost for business listing.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
I hope it's not controversial to say that if your ambitions are to be the whole world's middle man on something, you have some responsibilities regarding how to do it. Google doesn't have a "hey, these are scraped and only have like 80% accuracy" disclaimer or anything like that when they direct customers to businesses. I don't know where the line is but Google has some level of basic ethical requirement to not try to be the middleman when their failures (or in google terms >80% accuracy) cost others rather than themselves. It's presented as correct, not as a best guess. I get that it's impossible to be 100% correct at this scale, but then just don't present it as authoritative. Or let people correct mistakes that are harming them. Or something besides just driving traffic to their own product and saying there's nothing they could do.

jand 6y ago

I do not know for sure if this is related, but it definitly tastes the same: Back in 2010 [1] I logged into google using chrome on my mother's device. Removed the account from the device afterwards. Today, many devices later, we still were not able to stop my mother from receiving autofill entries, contacts and such originating from my account. Long story short: I am tried to vouch for the existance of non-layer-8 trouble leading to "shared accounts". Neverending fun. [1]: maybe 2012

ianhorn 6y ago

The discussion here is largely about how it's impossible to be really correct at Google scale, and this is something that terrifies me about where the industry is going. When there's a task that can be done by people, we can always correct issues. Going down to 99% correct could also mean cutting costs by like 90% through automation, so the business is going to be happy, except that now there's no one for the consumer to turn to but the bots when things go wrong. In the future, if your name is Scunthorpe [0], you're out of luck, because it's impossible to not have these issues at scale, and apparently scale is inevitable. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

dkersten 6y ago
The “x is impossible at google scale” (where x usually means customer support but in this case information correctness) argument falls flat to me. If x is impossible at their scale, then their scale needs to be cut back. Companies shouldn’t be allowed to be so large and all-encompassing and monopolistic that they negatively impact society because x is impossible at that scale.
- acituan 6y ago
  You’re right. Yet currently there is one major normativity in action and that is the normativity of the market. Market rewwards economies of scale and monopolies more than anything else. Unfortunately there is no working institution left to bring in the normativity of societal good for balance. One might hope for state to make a move, but big tech pays the most lobbying money currently, so I wouldn’t hold my breath.
  - dkersten 6y ago
    > so I wouldn’t hold my breath Of course. I agree that market pressure is pushing companies that way and there's little that can stop it now. But that still doesn't make the excuse a good one, certainly not for us, the people.

remote_phone 6y ago

At this point Google has a monopoly on the search business. When their algorithms hurt a business when you try to search for it, and they are not willing to change it or help, why is this not libel? They should be responsible for supporting this monopoly, and they should have competent support people that can either explain what’s going on or can fix it. They have neither and businesses really do suffer. I think a class action lawsuit should be started against Google until they start investing in support services and that can adequately fix mistakes. If not a class action lawsuit, then I fully support legislation and regulation that forces them to spend on support. This has happened so many times across so many of their platforms, it’s obvious what they are doing. They have created a monopoly and then their entire ecosystem depends on them, but they spend almost nothing to support their ecosystem. That’s how they remain so profitable.

Traster 6y ago
>why is this not libel? Is this not just a straight up section 230 instance? They're just displaying user generated content.

EGreg 6y ago

I am one of those commenters that sees everyone describing the same problem in different ways, for decades, and nothing getting done. The problem is centralization. The solution is open source alternatives. The issue is far beyond Google, or Facebook. It has to do with us being used to renting software from server farms far away. To tying infrastructure to control over data. To having large corporations that own the infrastructure be in the middle of all our searches, transactions, data hosting, relationships, conversations etc. If we don’tdo anything with open source, we will keep pearl clutching in 5, 10 years. When it came to voice conversations, we completey rethought the topology of phone company operators connecting circuits and moved to packet switching and VoIP. This led to a precipitious drop in prices. There was a time that a phone company was considered a canonical example of natural monopoly. No longer. And the costs went to zero, along with their power over your calls. We need to completely rethink the topology of the Web. And eventually that includes DNS, which is a glorified search engine. There are projects out there that are doing something about all this. Up til now you may agree with me. But now I mention that my company is extremely far along in doing just that, and you can grab the source code for free, or get involved by emailing me. I post a link and that’s when I will probably get downvoted. I am not sure why, but my best guess is that it is for “shilling” real free open source solutions to this problem instead of just talking about it: https://qbix.com/blog/2019/03/08/how-qbix-platform-can-change-the-world/ https://qbix.com/blog/2019/03/08/how-qbix-platform-can-chang... (I mention the downvotes because it happens every time I link to more info aboutthe software. I’d love to have a substantive conversation with the people downvoting, understand what I can do better. Please try to leave a comment if you think I’m doing something you’d rather I not do.) (EDIT: Well, that didn’t take long. The downvotes are always silent. It’s almost like there’s a cabal out there determined to bury any mention of decentralization, but who intentionally wants avoid any discussion.)

yowlingcat 6y ago
> It’s almost like there’s a cabal out there Please stop doing this. As per the guidlines(https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html): > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data. People are downvoting you in good faith, and they're trying to disagree with you and send a message. If we look at your comment history, your comments are you plugging your own personal project. And you keep getting downvoted because you are hijacking the conversation and redirecting it to something you built, that people did not explicitly ask for or express interest in. And so when you keep doing that, people will feel like it's spam. To make matters worse, instead of taking the subtle cue of a downvote to mean that you're doing something wrong, you seem to deny that and instead conspiratorially deflect blame and personal responsibility towards someone else. My suggestion is to submit your product as a new post. If people do not express interest in it, that indicates an issue with how you have designed your product, or marketed and positioned it. Take the reception that you get there, whatever it is, in good faith. It's clear you have a lot of ideas around your project and what motivated it that pertain to society at large. That leads me to my second suggestion: Try to consider what your values and beliefs are and how you would respond if you were not working on this project. This is your null hypothesis. Try to think about your project the same way others will, which is that without momentum it will likely fail. Make conversation based on that. And then, if you find that people are interested in what your values are that lead you to start this project, maybe after they express interest, gently plug your project. But if you try and shove something people want down other people's throats, you're just going to alienate others and drive them away. And then your project will fail, as it should, because you didn't build something that people truly wanted.

legohead 6y ago

Searched for lawyer both in the post and this comment section and got nothing. You'd be surprised what a lawyer can accomplish, even with no real law backing you up. You want an actual response from Google? Get a lawyer involved...

Glyptodon 6y ago
That's actually another problem in itself. You shouldn't need a lawyer just to be given the time of day when there's a problem.

jlokier 6y ago

Some may be sympathetic to Google not providing enough customer support for tricky issues. But here's a much simpler problem I've had. I have a Google My Business account which was long ago properly authorized and verified for a business at a particular location. Verified by landline phone, photos, etc. One day some random member of the public put in some incorrect information. I didn't notice the change for about 6 months. Now, even though I created, control, have verified etc, the Google My Business account for that data, and theoretically I'm the only person with that level of control over the business listing... I'm "not authorised" to correct the information via Google My Business itself. Wtf?! Isn't that what it is for? I can still login to Google My Business. I can edit some fields - I'm still regarded as the authority for sensitive things like phone number. So they haven't removed my special status (nobody else can edit the phone number). Rather, some things in Google My Business which are editable fields and the UI invites me to edit, give "not authorised" when I submit. That was surprising, I thought I was the authority. After trying every option, I tried Google's online support from Google My Business. It said I'd get a response in a few days; in reality it took longer than a month to get a terse and useless reply. I sent a few messages in that time, basically asking "is there anyone there"? Eventually I did speak with someone at Google about this. They told me that I needed to go through the whole "prove your business is what you say it is and not what a random member of the public said it is" verification rigmarole all over again, with photos, etc. In the circumstances I was not able to do so (I wasn't on site enough any more, and our office wasn't as visually distinctive any more). I'm asking myself, what is the point of a verified Google My Business account if randoms can override the business owner and lock them out anyway??! That was last time. Before that, it took 2 years to remove an incorrect address and location for the business. I don't think that can be put down to "limited staff for customer support". I put it down to poor & misleading system design. What is the point in telling people to get, verify and maintain Google My Business account, only to subtly not mention that it still isn't authoritative data for your listing, and the owner may get overridden by randoms. Probably without noticing for a long time.

stevespang 6y ago

When that happens you call your lawyers and sue the beejezus out of them . . . .

AlleUndKalle 6y ago

This is gross!

croh 6y ago

This is the reason I hate google. No customer support at all. They will just provide link to forum. I will go with Microsoft anytime for business software than Google. I feel like it is company built by nerds with zero business sense. If your KPI depends on building new products, there ain't a reason to improve existing ones. Classic case of Goodhart's law.

tech-historian 6y ago
It's not like Microsoft is pure as the driven snow, either. It's a massive corporation with all sorts of warts. Just to name a few from the past few months: WinGet fiasco: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/28/21272964/microsoft-winget-windows-package-manager-appget-copied https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/28/21272964/microsoft-winget... O365 Installer forces Bing as search default: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/22/21077280/microsoft-chrome-bing-extension-office-365-proplus-installer-default-search-engine https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/22/21077280/microsoft-chrome... Azure jacks up prices in sneaky ways: https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/microsoft-screws-customers-and-its-own-advocates-alike/ https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/microsoft-screws-customer... MS ends partner benefits: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/11/microsofts_reasons_for_ending_free_licenses_for_partners/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/11/microsofts_reasons_... Closes eBooks store, customers lose all purchased books: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47810367 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47810367 Microsoft partners with ICE for facial recognition and other technology: https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-employees-up-in-arms-over-cloud-contract-with-1826927803 https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-employees-up-in-arms-over-clou... etc etc etc.

anthuswilliams 6y ago

I know that this makes it to the front page because it is symptomatic of frustrating and frightening things that affect society as a whole. I won't comment on those things because I don't know the answers. But insofar as you want to solve your particular problem, there is a simple answer that seems not to have been suggested here. Get a lawyer and sue them!