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You miss the point entirely. Currently because the volume of bogus support requests is so enourmously high, and the fraud attempts also very high - the cost to

You miss the point entirely. Currently because the volume of bogus support requests is so enourmously high, and the fraud attempts also very high - the cost to properly do something like handle account lockout requests properly (on the scale of billions of users) would be EXTREMELY high. Google is actually pretty clear for consumer accounts, if you lock yourself out your content is lost and they suggest setting up a new account. Cell phone companies do handle this, you can do things like sim swaps etc with a real person - but you are usually paying $50 - $100 per MONTH with them. And even there plenty of folks have complained of having 2FA codes stolen as a result of this convenience. If they could charge $50 or $100 to provide paid support (a situation that is actually very COMMON at the enterprise level) for at least some people this will be worth doing. Then the business case is there to staff / resource etc the fix. Currently, with youtube / gmail etc, the revenue per user is so low it will NEVER make economic sense to have humans dealing with an account. But keep on banning paid support and you'll keep on getting no support.

bradly 6y ago
> Currently, with youtube / gmail etc, the revenue per user is so low it will NEVER make economic sense to have humans dealing with an account. Google made over $6 billion in profit in one quarter this year. YouTube had revenue over $5 billion in one quarter. They announced a $25 billion stock buyback. Google doesn't offer support because they choose not to.
- throwaway_1299 6y ago
  I work in a similar space and it is significantly complex and expensive to do this. Back of the napkin math - * Lets say on average customers contact Google support once a year for each product they use. That's 0.25 tickets per user per quarter. * Consider Google has ~10billion monthly productuser combinations (9 products have 1B+, most have significantly more) That is 2.5M tickets/support requests a quarter. ~28M tickets a day * If we consider an average ticket take ~3 mins to resolve, thats ~155k hours a day * If we take an employee being productive for 7 hours a day, that's 22k employees * If you take a 1:10 ratio, that is 2205,220 and 22 - 1st, 2nd and 3rd line managers. * Take the cost to be an average of 30k,60k,150k and 300k for each of those layers, thats ($661, $132M, $33M, $6.6M) which totals to ~$833M per quarter * The real world costs for this will probably be anywhere between 2X to 3X of this because all of these people come with other costs like infrastructure, tooling, space, etc. So we are looking at ~$1.7B to $2.5B. One might be tempted to say that money can be saved vs my estimates but keep in mind the challenges of localization, time zones, compliance etc is also significant and will probably mean an even larger expense. So yeah, it would be ~40% of the quarterly profit. Sure this is an expense so tax etc can be changed but my argument would be that we are severely underestimating the complexity and challenge at each step. So yes, I do think it will never make economic sense unless you are on the platform with sufficiently high spend. Just like every single other economic system we have out there.
  - macintux 6y ago
    Then maybe don’t build your business on a model that makes it impossible to do the right thing for your users.
    - logicchains 6y ago
      Maybe don't try to impose your preferences on other people; a lot of people would rather have a free service with no support than pay for support. It seems incredibly entitled to expect more from a service you're paying nothing for.
    - throwaway_1299 6y ago
      I know its not a popular opinion but as someone who comes from a non-western-rich country Googles business model is amazing for what it offers. Do they mess up a lot, for sure. But overall the fact that they can use capital expenses from big markets to deliver things globally has been positive for most people I know. That aside, the business model has established that you can get great service if you spend $xM+ or $xxM+ per month (whatever the number is) - its just that we expect the same for a much lower cost.
  - justinclift 6y ago
    > I work in a similar space and it is significantly complex and expensive to do this. Hmmm. Could have sworn Google promotes itself as being "best in class" at solving complex problems. ;)
    - throwaway_1299 6y ago
      Haha.. that is true. Guess they are not "best in class" for this one. That being said, I do genuinely wonder if there are any companies which have managed to do customer service at such a scale. Amazon is probably the closest but that is different because the average revenue per user is >> that of Google.
      - justinclift 6y ago
bleepblorp 6y ago
Access to online services, ranging from email to AWS, is now a vital component of contemporary life. Email is no longer a toy and losing access to a key email account can cause emotional hardship and severe financial losses. Access to paid online business services, such as Google advertising and cloud computing, is a vital component of modern business. Loss of access to these services will lead to severe financial losses and can lead to complete destruction of businesses. It is unacceptable for service providers to damage peoples' livelihoods because the account in question is free or is used by a small business that doesn't spend >10k$ a month. It is not reasonable to demand that customers pay $50 a month to protect themselves against capricious account closures. That is merely another way of a service provider saying 'nice email account you've got there, it would be a shame if something happened to it.' That's called extortion or even racketeering. Alphabet's net profit for 2019 was $34 billion USD. The can afford to treat their customers financial interests with respect, and if Alphabet won't do that voluntarily, then it's time for governments to force them to.
megous 6y ago
> Google is actually pretty clear for consumer accounts, if you lock yourself out your content is lost and they suggest setting up a new account. What if they lock you out? You make it sound like it's some transparent and easy to understand process based on publicly available rules, and it's just user violating some obvious documented rule, therefore locking himself out. But maybe you just travel to africa for the first time, and they just decide that now you can't login, because "suspicious activity". Bye. If they wish to reduce support costs, one other way is to make the service better and more predictable. Maybe add a checkbox to opt out out of this "you're too stupid to keep your credentials safe" banning system, or something like that.

bradly 6y ago

> Currently, with youtube / gmail etc, the revenue per user is so low it will NEVER make economic sense to have humans dealing with an account. Google made over $6 billion in profit in one quarter this year. YouTube had revenue over $5 billion in one quarter. They announced a $25 billion stock buyback. Google doesn't offer support because they choose not to.

throwaway_1299 6y ago
I work in a similar space and it is significantly complex and expensive to do this. Back of the napkin math - * Lets say on average customers contact Google support once a year for each product they use. That's 0.25 tickets per user per quarter. * Consider Google has ~10billion monthly productuser combinations (9 products have 1B+, most have significantly more) That is 2.5M tickets/support requests a quarter. ~28M tickets a day * If we consider an average ticket take ~3 mins to resolve, thats ~155k hours a day * If we take an employee being productive for 7 hours a day, that's 22k employees * If you take a 1:10 ratio, that is 2205,220 and 22 - 1st, 2nd and 3rd line managers. * Take the cost to be an average of 30k,60k,150k and 300k for each of those layers, thats ($661, $132M, $33M, $6.6M) which totals to ~$833M per quarter * The real world costs for this will probably be anywhere between 2X to 3X of this because all of these people come with other costs like infrastructure, tooling, space, etc. So we are looking at ~$1.7B to $2.5B. One might be tempted to say that money can be saved vs my estimates but keep in mind the challenges of localization, time zones, compliance etc is also significant and will probably mean an even larger expense. So yeah, it would be ~40% of the quarterly profit. Sure this is an expense so tax etc can be changed but my argument would be that we are severely underestimating the complexity and challenge at each step. So yes, I do think it will never make economic sense unless you are on the platform with sufficiently high spend. Just like every single other economic system we have out there.
- macintux 6y ago
  Then maybe don’t build your business on a model that makes it impossible to do the right thing for your users.
  - logicchains 6y ago
    Maybe don't try to impose your preferences on other people; a lot of people would rather have a free service with no support than pay for support. It seems incredibly entitled to expect more from a service you're paying nothing for.
  - throwaway_1299 6y ago
    I know its not a popular opinion but as someone who comes from a non-western-rich country Googles business model is amazing for what it offers. Do they mess up a lot, for sure. But overall the fact that they can use capital expenses from big markets to deliver things globally has been positive for most people I know. That aside, the business model has established that you can get great service if you spend $xM+ or $xxM+ per month (whatever the number is) - its just that we expect the same for a much lower cost.
- justinclift 6y ago
  > I work in a similar space and it is significantly complex and expensive to do this. Hmmm. Could have sworn Google promotes itself as being "best in class" at solving complex problems. ;)
  - throwaway_1299 6y ago
    Haha.. that is true. Guess they are not "best in class" for this one. That being said, I do genuinely wonder if there are any companies which have managed to do customer service at such a scale. Amazon is probably the closest but that is different because the average revenue per user is >> that of Google.
    - justinclift 6y ago

bleepblorp 6y ago

Access to online services, ranging from email to AWS, is now a vital component of contemporary life. Email is no longer a toy and losing access to a key email account can cause emotional hardship and severe financial losses. Access to paid online business services, such as Google advertising and cloud computing, is a vital component of modern business. Loss of access to these services will lead to severe financial losses and can lead to complete destruction of businesses. It is unacceptable for service providers to damage peoples' livelihoods because the account in question is free or is used by a small business that doesn't spend >10k$ a month. It is not reasonable to demand that customers pay $50 a month to protect themselves against capricious account closures. That is merely another way of a service provider saying 'nice email account you've got there, it would be a shame if something happened to it.' That's called extortion or even racketeering. Alphabet's net profit for 2019 was $34 billion USD. The can afford to treat their customers financial interests with respect, and if Alphabet won't do that voluntarily, then it's time for governments to force them to.

megous 6y ago

> Google is actually pretty clear for consumer accounts, if you lock yourself out your content is lost and they suggest setting up a new account. What if they lock you out? You make it sound like it's some transparent and easy to understand process based on publicly available rules, and it's just user violating some obvious documented rule, therefore locking himself out. But maybe you just travel to africa for the first time, and they just decide that now you can't login, because "suspicious activity". Bye. If they wish to reduce support costs, one other way is to make the service better and more predictable. Maybe add a checkbox to opt out out of this "you're too stupid to keep your credentials safe" banning system, or something like that.