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But, see, the trouble here is that these users aren't customers. They're product sold to advertisers. When I was spending a few million a year on AdWords, gues

But, see, the trouble here is that these users aren't customers. They're product sold to advertisers. When I was spending a few million a year on AdWords, guess who had a direct line to Google, both via email and on the phone? I could talk to those guys whenever I wanted about campaigns, get advice on improving my keyword mix, budgeting strategies, any of that stuff. From this business' point of view, individuals just don't matter. You could piss off hundreds or thousands of them and not make any dent on the bottom line, since they're not the ones who put money into Google's pockets and they're easily replaced. The incentives are lined up in ways that, for the most part, work fine, but if you expect Google to care about you at the scale they operate, with the business mix they currently enjoy, you'd better be on the advertiser side of the equation.

jdunlop 15y ago
I have to admit, this whole story gives me pause. I live and breath by my gmail account, and it they decide to deactivate it for no good reason (or refuse to help me after the fact), how can I be expected to use their services with any confidence? Perhaps my planned migration to google+ is on hold...
palish 15y ago
The world would be a better place if if companies focused on "people", and not on "money". Of course that's unrealistic. But I don't care. I grew up believing in Star-Trek-style society. You know... "Social problems are gone; people are free to devote themselves to improving themselves; etc". I honestly believed that humanity would someday achieve this. I used to believe most people were inherently good, and that they are naturally adverse to doing unethical things, and that if they did something unethical by accident, then they would go out of their way to fix it, even if they weren't obligated to. Because it's the right thing to do. Needless to say, Real Life came as a nasty surprise. You're a bad person for not caring about That One Guy Who You Deleted 7 Years Of His Life. But hey, our capitalistic society encourages not caring, so it must be okay, right?
- wallawe 15y ago
  I sympathize with your idealistic sort of thinking but it is unreasonable. Corporations (which is what Google is) are responsible to shareholders. The purpose of a corporation by definition is to maximize the bottom line for the shareholder. It has nothing to do with being good to people. The only way that this guy's problem will get solved is if enough people catch wind of his situation that it affects the fairly popular status of the Google brand. I use a lot of their services myself and would be just as infuriated if this happened to me, but you have to keep in mind what the purpose of Google is essentially. Now, if you want to talk about the down/upside of our capitalistic society and corporate greed that is another conversation to be had.
  - palish 15y ago
    I believe the idea of "publicly-held companies" is a net negative for humanity. It encourages immoral behavior. Obviously my thoughts are unreasonable. I wish the world were unreasonable. Because then people might empathize with each other to an unreasonable degree, resulting in far less grief and hate within our microscopic timeline of our universe.
    - wallawe 15y ago
      What is the answer to 99 out of 100 questions? Money. It is not the pubicly-held companies. It is the power of money to control, persuade, influence, or even empower. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It is true that money doesn't buy happiness but even truer that not having money can cause unhappiness via stress among other things. The problem is what people who have money decide to do with it and how they choose to influence the larger whole. Many of the people who have put their entire intellect towards making money, have desired to do so for the wrong reasons and therefore use it in a net negative way as you have put it. I guess what I am saying, is that it falls on the individual to make the right decision, and not corporations, governments or societies as a whole.
    - firemanx 15y ago
      I have to disagree with you. "Publicly-held companies" don't encourage immoral behavior. People encourage immoral behavior. I know that some folks like to think of people as "basically good", but I don't think history has held that out. Humanity has proven time after time that regardless of the social structure or organization, their tendency for immoral behavior pervades each one. "We did it for the shareholders" may be a unique excuse in the realm of organizations, but governments, churches, companies, school boards, communes, etc all suffer from problems like these. The difference with public companies is that folks can vote with their dollars, or in an adequately free economy, can band together and compete.
hn_decay 15y ago
"But, see, the trouble here is that these users aren't customers. They're product sold to advertisers." The whole product/customer thing is a boring bit of sophistry usually used to slander Google. Google's profitability secret is a very high revenue to employee ratio. When I bought a $600 Nexus One from Google and discovered a problem with fulfilment, the grand total of support Google supplied to me was an automated email response (that itself was a dead end -- no recourse or escalation), and a link to an FAQ. That's just how Google operates. If they can make a cron job that eliminates the need to supply support for most customers, that's what they do. It is this way whether they benefit from you via your eyeballs, or from your wallet.
- danilocampos 15y ago
  > That's just how Google operates. If they can make a cron job that eliminates the need to supply support for most customers, that's what they do. You begin with what seems like disagreement, then prove my point. A $600 device to be exposed to Google's mobile ads? Here's an email. A few million dollars a year in ad spend? Here's a whole department of new friends. Solving problems with AdWords can be done algorithmically. And is – there are lots of little automated touches there, from ad approval to keyword suggestion. But smart humans can give more – resulting in better financial performance for Google. Code can rarely resolve support issues. But that's all they bothered to do because end users are not a priority. For all the reasons I mentioned. When it benefits them financially, Google offers support. Otherwise, they don't. You can chalk this up to whatever cultural or business case you'd like. But the end result is that unless you're pouring money into their pockets, you, as an individual, don't matter to Google. That's not sophistry – that's established fact.
  - hn_decay 15y ago
    So if we discard the polarizing language about customers and products, we get to your point being that the more profitable you are as a customer, the more attention you get? I don't think that is terribly challenging viewpoint.
    - 15y ago
DrJokepu 15y ago
I keep hearing this argument over and over again but the fact is that when I was using Google AdWords and had problems, I received zero (0) support and response from Google. Nothing. And I was a customer in the "I'm paying money for this" sense of the word. Obviously this is just anecdotical evidence as the only "data point" I have is my own experience and it's possible that everyone else in the world receives five star support from Google right away. None the less, it made me lose a lot of respect for them and in the end I ended up cancelling my account and asked for a refund (which is automated).
- vaksel 15y ago
  yeah same here....the thing with Google is that unless you are spending 100K a month, it doesn't really care about you as a customer.

jdunlop 15y ago

I have to admit, this whole story gives me pause. I live and breath by my gmail account, and it they decide to deactivate it for no good reason (or refuse to help me after the fact), how can I be expected to use their services with any confidence? Perhaps my planned migration to google+ is on hold...

palish 15y ago

The world would be a better place if if companies focused on "people", and not on "money". Of course that's unrealistic. But I don't care. I grew up believing in Star-Trek-style society. You know... "Social problems are gone; people are free to devote themselves to improving themselves; etc". I honestly believed that humanity would someday achieve this. I used to believe most people were inherently good, and that they are naturally adverse to doing unethical things, and that if they did something unethical by accident, then they would go out of their way to fix it, even if they weren't obligated to. Because it's the right thing to do. Needless to say, Real Life came as a nasty surprise. You're a bad person for not caring about That One Guy Who You Deleted 7 Years Of His Life. But hey, our capitalistic society encourages not caring, so it must be okay, right?

wallawe 15y ago
I sympathize with your idealistic sort of thinking but it is unreasonable. Corporations (which is what Google is) are responsible to shareholders. The purpose of a corporation by definition is to maximize the bottom line for the shareholder. It has nothing to do with being good to people. The only way that this guy's problem will get solved is if enough people catch wind of his situation that it affects the fairly popular status of the Google brand. I use a lot of their services myself and would be just as infuriated if this happened to me, but you have to keep in mind what the purpose of Google is essentially. Now, if you want to talk about the down/upside of our capitalistic society and corporate greed that is another conversation to be had.
- palish 15y ago
  I believe the idea of "publicly-held companies" is a net negative for humanity. It encourages immoral behavior. Obviously my thoughts are unreasonable. I wish the world were unreasonable. Because then people might empathize with each other to an unreasonable degree, resulting in far less grief and hate within our microscopic timeline of our universe.
  - wallawe 15y ago
    What is the answer to 99 out of 100 questions? Money. It is not the pubicly-held companies. It is the power of money to control, persuade, influence, or even empower. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It is true that money doesn't buy happiness but even truer that not having money can cause unhappiness via stress among other things. The problem is what people who have money decide to do with it and how they choose to influence the larger whole. Many of the people who have put their entire intellect towards making money, have desired to do so for the wrong reasons and therefore use it in a net negative way as you have put it. I guess what I am saying, is that it falls on the individual to make the right decision, and not corporations, governments or societies as a whole.
  - firemanx 15y ago
    I have to disagree with you. "Publicly-held companies" don't encourage immoral behavior. People encourage immoral behavior. I know that some folks like to think of people as "basically good", but I don't think history has held that out. Humanity has proven time after time that regardless of the social structure or organization, their tendency for immoral behavior pervades each one. "We did it for the shareholders" may be a unique excuse in the realm of organizations, but governments, churches, companies, school boards, communes, etc all suffer from problems like these. The difference with public companies is that folks can vote with their dollars, or in an adequately free economy, can band together and compete.

hn_decay 15y ago

"But, see, the trouble here is that these users aren't customers. They're product sold to advertisers." The whole product/customer thing is a boring bit of sophistry usually used to slander Google. Google's profitability secret is a very high revenue to employee ratio. When I bought a $600 Nexus One from Google and discovered a problem with fulfilment, the grand total of support Google supplied to me was an automated email response (that itself was a dead end -- no recourse or escalation), and a link to an FAQ. That's just how Google operates. If they can make a cron job that eliminates the need to supply support for most customers, that's what they do. It is this way whether they benefit from you via your eyeballs, or from your wallet.

danilocampos 15y ago
> That's just how Google operates. If they can make a cron job that eliminates the need to supply support for most customers, that's what they do. You begin with what seems like disagreement, then prove my point. A $600 device to be exposed to Google's mobile ads? Here's an email. A few million dollars a year in ad spend? Here's a whole department of new friends. Solving problems with AdWords can be done algorithmically. And is – there are lots of little automated touches there, from ad approval to keyword suggestion. But smart humans can give more – resulting in better financial performance for Google. Code can rarely resolve support issues. But that's all they bothered to do because end users are not a priority. For all the reasons I mentioned. When it benefits them financially, Google offers support. Otherwise, they don't. You can chalk this up to whatever cultural or business case you'd like. But the end result is that unless you're pouring money into their pockets, you, as an individual, don't matter to Google. That's not sophistry – that's established fact.
- hn_decay 15y ago
  So if we discard the polarizing language about customers and products, we get to your point being that the more profitable you are as a customer, the more attention you get? I don't think that is terribly challenging viewpoint.
  - 15y ago

DrJokepu 15y ago

I keep hearing this argument over and over again but the fact is that when I was using Google AdWords and had problems, I received zero (0) support and response from Google. Nothing. And I was a customer in the "I'm paying money for this" sense of the word. Obviously this is just anecdotical evidence as the only "data point" I have is my own experience and it's possible that everyone else in the world receives five star support from Google right away. None the less, it made me lose a lot of respect for them and in the end I ended up cancelling my account and asked for a refund (which is automated).

vaksel 15y ago
yeah same here....the thing with Google is that unless you are spending 100K a month, it doesn't really care about you as a customer.