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Not to really defend Google here, but how else would you do it? The amount of data on these platforms is enormous and having people review the videos/apps/whate

Not to really defend Google here, but how else would you do it? The amount of data on these platforms is enormous and having people review the videos/apps/whatever would be simply prohibitively expensive. I think they need to balance how strict their abuse detection is. Making it too strict will kick out legitimate users without mercy. Making it less strict will allow potentially harmful (for business) content to spread on their platform, which could lead to lawsuits, loss of advertisers etc. You can see which direction is more appealing for a corporation. So concretely, now we complain about mistreated users, but if the automatic moderation was less strict, we'd complain about extreme content. It's not an easy problem.

GeekyBear 5y ago
> Not to really defend Google here, but how else would you do it? The amount of data on these platforms is enormous and having people review the videos/apps/whatever would be simply prohibitively expensive. Google is not incapable of providing customer support. Netflix, Apple, and Amazon all manage to provide free, robust customer service. Google is simply unwilling.
- remram 5y ago
  Exactly. Additional this is not a free platform like YouTube or Gmail: creating a Google Play account costs money, and Google took a cut of every app sale. Saying that Google has too many free users to provide support doesn't make sense here...
WinterMount223 5y ago
If you can’t scale customer support then you can’t scale the customer base.
- janto 5y ago
  I'd guess that Google's support for their ad services are good enough? The problem here is that Play publishers are not really Google's customers.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    Play Store publishers pay Google $25 for access to the Play Store, and then pay them 15% to 30% of all revenue collected via the apps.
    - janto 5y ago
      Is that a lot from Google's perspective? If apps follow some power law distribution it might only be worth providing human support to a very limited number of them.
      - jgod 5y ago
        Customer support is provided for sub $20 items from e commerce sites who don't have Google's market cap. Not to mention that a customer support agent's time isn't exactly worth hundreds of dollars an hour.
        janto 5y ago
        It depends on how narrowly focused Google's strategy and commitment to reliable income is. Linearly scaling up on human support agents doesn't look aligned with an AI driven strategy to enable income that is only coming from their advertising services. From https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/business-google.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/busin... Google Services generated $69.4 billion, or about 92% of total revenue, in Q4 FY 2021. Advertising revenue, at $61.2 billion, comprised 88% of the segment's revenue. The segment's revenue is up 31.3% compared to Q4 FY 2020. Google Services posted operating income of $26.0 billion, up 36.3% from the year-ago quarter. This figure surpassed Alphabet's total consolidated operating income of $21.9 billion due to operating losses in the other two segments as well as unallocated corporate costs. Google Services is thus the only segment that currently makes positive contributions to Alphabet's overall operating income So Google Play can only exist in ways where it supports advertising. Sales are trivial in comparison. "Delighting" every app publisher is simply distracting.
        5y ago
someotherperson 5y ago
> The amount of data on these platforms is enormous and having people review the videos/apps/whatever would be simply prohibitively expensive Let people pay for a manual review (say $300) with Google refunding the amount if it's found to be erroneous.
- criddell 5y ago
  That’s how Microsoft support worked, at least for a while. A support call was $99 and then if it was a problem on their end, they wouldn’t charge you.
- laurent92 5y ago
  That would incentivize Google not to find it erroneous.
  - ______-_-______ 5y ago
    If they blatantly lie to steal your money, you can now prove actual damages in court. That's an improvement over trying to sue over a lost free gmail account. Not that I think going to court is an ideal solution, but what other choice do you have as a lowly civilian without friends in Mountain View?
  - someotherperson 5y ago
    Why? I appreciate the "always assume bad faith" approach for corporations (hell, I'm the biggest advocate) but what's the benefit for Google here? 1. The support cost is totally offset -- at $50/hour, it would give someone four hours to investigate and two hours to prepare a report. 2. Bad actors won't pay, and neither will people who haven't really made money on the store 3. Google develops an actual framework for resolution 4. Some level of trust is developed again 5. It helps provide better training data for Google's automated process -- the engineers behind it probably cost $300/day each. I really can't see a situation where this would incentivise Google to steal money. It would land them in much hotter water than anything else they've been involved in before. We're talking international lawsuits if just one single support staff decides to be a whistleblower. It's too involved of a conspiracy.
butlerm 5y ago
If it is a service they provide for free, charging a fee to get something important (like a total account ban) fairly reconsidered would be perfectly reasonable. Google is big enough the government should require that sort of thing. "Let's be as evil as we want to be" is a fairly inappropriate guideline for a company like that.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Oh man... wait till some beancounter finds out that they can earn $X per every banned account,... that would be a pain in the ass for everyone.
kd913 5y ago
They could begin by segmenting their accounts such that a trivial youtube ban doesn't result in a full google service account ban. That seems pretty damn basic right?
- 41b696ef1113 5y ago
  It is because of polices like that which guarantees I will never use Google Cloud. Why risk getting my email pulled so I can host cat videos when AWS will not dangle the sword of Damocles above my head.
rodgerd 5y ago
> simply prohibitively expensive. No, it isn't. Google wouldn't go out of business. I doubt that they'd even take a hit of a few percent in profit.
NKosmatos 5y ago
They don’t need to filter and moderate everything, but they should at least have humans for taking care of escalations and issues like the one reported here. Sure 5hey have all sorts of AI/ML algorithms doing the automated banning and removal of apps but they could have real people taking care of the false positive cases.
nyuszika7h 5y ago
Google can definitely afford it, except they won't because they prefer to be greedy and keep the money. In general though, if you really can't afford proper customer service, then you should simply not be providing services at that scale.
Dylan16807 5y ago
> The amount of data on these platforms is enormous and having people review the videos/apps/whatever would be simply prohibitively expensive. For free accounts, maybe. But it wouldn't be very expensive to provide basic service to accounts with significant money flow where google is taking a cut. Or accounts that are directly paying every month.

GeekyBear 5y ago

> Not to really defend Google here, but how else would you do it? The amount of data on these platforms is enormous and having people review the videos/apps/whatever would be simply prohibitively expensive. Google is not incapable of providing customer support. Netflix, Apple, and Amazon all manage to provide free, robust customer service. Google is simply unwilling.

remram 5y ago
Exactly. Additional this is not a free platform like YouTube or Gmail: creating a Google Play account costs money, and Google took a cut of every app sale. Saying that Google has too many free users to provide support doesn't make sense here...

WinterMount223 5y ago

If you can’t scale customer support then you can’t scale the customer base.

janto 5y ago
I'd guess that Google's support for their ad services are good enough? The problem here is that Play publishers are not really Google's customers.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Play Store publishers pay Google $25 for access to the Play Store, and then pay them 15% to 30% of all revenue collected via the apps.
  - janto 5y ago
    Is that a lot from Google's perspective? If apps follow some power law distribution it might only be worth providing human support to a very limited number of them.
    - jgod 5y ago
      Customer support is provided for sub $20 items from e commerce sites who don't have Google's market cap. Not to mention that a customer support agent's time isn't exactly worth hundreds of dollars an hour.
      - janto 5y ago
        It depends on how narrowly focused Google's strategy and commitment to reliable income is. Linearly scaling up on human support agents doesn't look aligned with an AI driven strategy to enable income that is only coming from their advertising services. From https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/business-google.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/busin... Google Services generated $69.4 billion, or about 92% of total revenue, in Q4 FY 2021. Advertising revenue, at $61.2 billion, comprised 88% of the segment's revenue. The segment's revenue is up 31.3% compared to Q4 FY 2020. Google Services posted operating income of $26.0 billion, up 36.3% from the year-ago quarter. This figure surpassed Alphabet's total consolidated operating income of $21.9 billion due to operating losses in the other two segments as well as unallocated corporate costs. Google Services is thus the only segment that currently makes positive contributions to Alphabet's overall operating income So Google Play can only exist in ways where it supports advertising. Sales are trivial in comparison. "Delighting" every app publisher is simply distracting.
        5y ago

someotherperson 5y ago

> The amount of data on these platforms is enormous and having people review the videos/apps/whatever would be simply prohibitively expensive Let people pay for a manual review (say $300) with Google refunding the amount if it's found to be erroneous.

criddell 5y ago
That’s how Microsoft support worked, at least for a while. A support call was $99 and then if it was a problem on their end, they wouldn’t charge you.
laurent92 5y ago
That would incentivize Google not to find it erroneous.
- ______-_-______ 5y ago
  If they blatantly lie to steal your money, you can now prove actual damages in court. That's an improvement over trying to sue over a lost free gmail account. Not that I think going to court is an ideal solution, but what other choice do you have as a lowly civilian without friends in Mountain View?
- someotherperson 5y ago
  Why? I appreciate the "always assume bad faith" approach for corporations (hell, I'm the biggest advocate) but what's the benefit for Google here? 1. The support cost is totally offset -- at $50/hour, it would give someone four hours to investigate and two hours to prepare a report. 2. Bad actors won't pay, and neither will people who haven't really made money on the store 3. Google develops an actual framework for resolution 4. Some level of trust is developed again 5. It helps provide better training data for Google's automated process -- the engineers behind it probably cost $300/day each. I really can't see a situation where this would incentivise Google to steal money. It would land them in much hotter water than anything else they've been involved in before. We're talking international lawsuits if just one single support staff decides to be a whistleblower. It's too involved of a conspiracy.

butlerm 5y ago

If it is a service they provide for free, charging a fee to get something important (like a total account ban) fairly reconsidered would be perfectly reasonable. Google is big enough the government should require that sort of thing. "Let's be as evil as we want to be" is a fairly inappropriate guideline for a company like that.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Oh man... wait till some beancounter finds out that they can earn $X per every banned account,... that would be a pain in the ass for everyone.

kd913 5y ago

They could begin by segmenting their accounts such that a trivial youtube ban doesn't result in a full google service account ban. That seems pretty damn basic right?

41b696ef1113 5y ago
It is because of polices like that which guarantees I will never use Google Cloud. Why risk getting my email pulled so I can host cat videos when AWS will not dangle the sword of Damocles above my head.

rodgerd 5y ago

> simply prohibitively expensive. No, it isn't. Google wouldn't go out of business. I doubt that they'd even take a hit of a few percent in profit.

NKosmatos 5y ago

They don’t need to filter and moderate everything, but they should at least have humans for taking care of escalations and issues like the one reported here. Sure 5hey have all sorts of AI/ML algorithms doing the automated banning and removal of apps but they could have real people taking care of the false positive cases.

nyuszika7h 5y ago

Google can definitely afford it, except they won't because they prefer to be greedy and keep the money. In general though, if you really can't afford proper customer service, then you should simply not be providing services at that scale.

Dylan16807 5y ago

> The amount of data on these platforms is enormous and having people review the videos/apps/whatever would be simply prohibitively expensive. For free accounts, maybe. But it wouldn't be very expensive to provide basic service to accounts with significant money flow where google is taking a cut. Or accounts that are directly paying every month.