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Google is simply not a very reliable business partner for tech. I have a decade worth of experience in the Danish public sector, where I’ve had plenty of great

Google is simply not a very reliable business partner for tech. I have a decade worth of experience in the Danish public sector, where I’ve had plenty of great experiences with both Amazon and Microsoft. I know that a lot of people would prefer things to be open source, but part of what you pay for in an Enterprise Organisation is availability of support. When AWS first entered the European market, most of what they sold in the support side was rather automated. Which just couldn’t compete with what Microsoft sells, where Seattle will call you with updates every hour on the hour if you’re a big enough customer. This is a big part of why Azure managed to capture the market share it did under the nose of AWS, the other part being that once you buy Office365 well… Anyway, I’ve never seen a huge tech company change their ways as quick as Amazon did, and today they’re actually ahead of Microsoft in terms of compliance with EU legislation and Enterprise support. Google mean while has the same business-to-business support that it does for private customers like the author here. For some services it’s because Google doesn’t care, but they do care about Education and they still can’t figure out how to readjust to be a valuable business partner even when they actually want to sell you something. So my best advice to anyone using Google services would be to find a better vendor as quick as possible. It’s completely ridiculous that you can lose your business account over someone replying to a spam mail. Just imagine if Microsoft kicked the Danish government out of Office365 every time one of our employees did something silly in their emails. I know there is a difference between us as individuals and the Danish governed, but the point in trying to make is that there isn’t, not to Google at least. So maybe they are just a terrible vendor? This is all anecdotal by the way. I haven’t seen anyone complain about getting locked out of their azure essential subscription, so in my eyes that is simply a safer way to pay for g-suite type services than g-suite. That being said, I do personally host my domain and DNS stuff on their own separate accounts at their own separate vendors, both privately and professionally, exactly because you want that stuff to remain unaffected by everything else.

profmonocle 5y ago
> Google mean while has the same business-to-business support that it does for private customers like the author here. For some services it’s because Google doesn’t care, but they do care about Education and they still can’t figure out how to readjust to be a valuable business partner even when they actually want to sell you something. My experience with Google's business support is that instead of talking to a brick wall, there's now someone between you and the brick wall. Support is very responsive, and the response is always "I've filed an internal support ticket". When you ask for an update after weeks/months, the response is basically "there has been no update on the support ticket". As a bonus, your support ticket with them will sometimes auto-close because there hasn't been any activity - I had to ask Google Cloud support to re-open an unresolved issue three times once.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  "My experience with Google's business support is that instead of talking to a brick wall, there's now someone between you and the brick wall. " That feels like a lot like the support my company (multi bullion dollar company) gets from MS and other vendors. We have super friendly people to interface with but if you have a real problem nothing happens besides a lot of friendly phone calls with "action items" and "follow ups". But when an issue hasn't been addressed for months it's a taboo to call that out. Even the managers at my own company don't like when you say "issue X hasn't been resolved". Instead it seems an unspoken rule to just keep scheduling conference calls that never lead to anything but are very friendly and upbeat.
- polynomial 5y ago
  The robot hasn't gotten any better, but it's learned how to fake smile.
- lukeschlather 5y ago
  That's generally my experience with Microsoft support. Microsoft support won't even acknowledge that there's a bug most of the time. (I've heard tell they have some really bad KPIs for their tier-1 support people.) Google support usually figures out my issues within a week. Of course I use GCP more heavily than Azure so part of this is probably me writing significantly better bug reports. (On the other hand, while there are aspects of GCP I dislike none of Azure's stuff makes any sense to me. It seems like Azure managed to build something in a few years that has more accumulated incompatible interfaces hidden behind nested dialogs than all of the MS Windows OS.)
fmajid 5y ago
Google is an online advertising monopoly at heart and that breeds the complacency all monopolies instill in their salespeople. That’s why they are an irrelevance in the cloud services market despite arguably superior technology, just like telco monopolies that have the same sense of entitlement.
theshrike79 5y ago
I can confirm the AWS support responsiveness. I've worked both with small clients (under $1k AWS spend) and big ones (monthly billing on the order of my yearly salary) and both got pretty much equal response times from their (paid) support. The BigCo of course had a dedicated direct contact on company Slack for any issues and zoom calls with AWS staff before big launches - but anyone can get it if they spend money. Google on the other hand seems to be completely opaque. The front page of HN seems to be the best way to get stuff resolved.

profmonocle 5y ago

> Google mean while has the same business-to-business support that it does for private customers like the author here. For some services it’s because Google doesn’t care, but they do care about Education and they still can’t figure out how to readjust to be a valuable business partner even when they actually want to sell you something. My experience with Google's business support is that instead of talking to a brick wall, there's now someone between you and the brick wall. Support is very responsive, and the response is always "I've filed an internal support ticket". When you ask for an update after weeks/months, the response is basically "there has been no update on the support ticket". As a bonus, your support ticket with them will sometimes auto-close because there hasn't been any activity - I had to ask Google Cloud support to re-open an unresolved issue three times once.

spaetzleesser 5y ago
"My experience with Google's business support is that instead of talking to a brick wall, there's now someone between you and the brick wall. " That feels like a lot like the support my company (multi bullion dollar company) gets from MS and other vendors. We have super friendly people to interface with but if you have a real problem nothing happens besides a lot of friendly phone calls with "action items" and "follow ups". But when an issue hasn't been addressed for months it's a taboo to call that out. Even the managers at my own company don't like when you say "issue X hasn't been resolved". Instead it seems an unspoken rule to just keep scheduling conference calls that never lead to anything but are very friendly and upbeat.
polynomial 5y ago
The robot hasn't gotten any better, but it's learned how to fake smile.
lukeschlather 5y ago
That's generally my experience with Microsoft support. Microsoft support won't even acknowledge that there's a bug most of the time. (I've heard tell they have some really bad KPIs for their tier-1 support people.) Google support usually figures out my issues within a week. Of course I use GCP more heavily than Azure so part of this is probably me writing significantly better bug reports. (On the other hand, while there are aspects of GCP I dislike none of Azure's stuff makes any sense to me. It seems like Azure managed to build something in a few years that has more accumulated incompatible interfaces hidden behind nested dialogs than all of the MS Windows OS.)

fmajid 5y ago

Google is an online advertising monopoly at heart and that breeds the complacency all monopolies instill in their salespeople. That’s why they are an irrelevance in the cloud services market despite arguably superior technology, just like telco monopolies that have the same sense of entitlement.

theshrike79 5y ago

I can confirm the AWS support responsiveness. I've worked both with small clients (under $1k AWS spend) and big ones (monthly billing on the order of my yearly salary) and both got pretty much equal response times from their (paid) support. The BigCo of course had a dedicated direct contact on company Slack for any issues and zoom calls with AWS staff before big launches - but anyone can get it if they spend money. Google on the other hand seems to be completely opaque. The front page of HN seems to be the best way to get stuff resolved.