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> of course Google will never tell you that or confirm or deny this This is my problem with de facto utilities that are not regulated like utilities. Google ca

• srcreigh 4y ago
  There's a latent assumption here that big tech isn't already regulated by the US government, albeit in a hidden manner or a manner you don't like.
• jopsen 4y ago
  > This is my problem with de facto utilities that are not regulated like utilities. I totally see that. But on the flip side we see utilities like phone companies unable to block abusive robocalls and scammers. (My thoughts are my own, and they are rarely well-formed)
  • powerhour 4y ago
    They could have used any spam filters they might have written to simply flat numbers so their customers could decide what to do for themselves. Instead we have to rely on third party services (and thus share private information with those parties).
  • tpxl 4y ago
    They are not unable, they are unwilling.
    • paulgb 4y ago
      Before 2019, they were hesitant to do so over uncertainty as to whether it would be a violation of common carrier laws to do so. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-robocalls/fcc-set-to-let-phone-companies-block-more-robocalls-idUSKCN1SL1CC https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-robocalls/fcc-set-to-...
      • saghm 4y ago
        Okay, and in the three years since then, have they made any progress? If not, why am I wrong if I think they may have just been using that as an excuse?
        • pkaye 4y ago
          They have implemented the shake and stir protocol in the US.
      • Schroedingersat 4y ago
        Easy solution where that's not an issue. Add an abuse button to the phone. Every call costs a dollar to connect, no matter where it comes from - another carrier or international or whatever. You get the dollar back if the receiver doesn't press the abuse button. The dollar can be waived if the company knows the call is coming from an individual household with low call volume.
    • LarsAlereon 4y ago
• b112 4y ago
  So that some employees at Google can have easier time managing an issue(not disclosing the reason for account restrictions probably makes the scammers life harder too Yet, while this is often the cited reason, it is simply not true. There is no way on Earth, that scammers don't find out about such restrictions trivially, easily. So all this really does, is inconvenience the honest, and do zip, zero, nada to hassle the miscreants. edit: more thought here, likely this is just an excuse, to not properly train reps, or to not deal with the issue at all. It is the equiv of "think of the children!", but corp speak instead of politi speak. "Sorry for the bad service, security issue!"
  • soco 4y ago
    And Google aren't the only offenders here. On Tumblr (now owned by Automattic) the only support case type where you're guaranteed to NOT receive answers is for the reason "account termination".
  • NamTaf 4y ago
    The hilarious thing is that that excuse is essentially just security through obscurity. Which is especially rich coming from the company whose vulnerability research team famously set a hard disclosure deadline that was shorter than many others at the time.
    • imajoredinecon 4y ago
      The engineering reality is that, much of the time, information asymmetry is a big help when you’re an anti-abuse engineer trying to build systems that distinguish good traffic from bad. It’s not an “undisclosed vulnerability” to build a very effective heuristic that wouldn’t be effective if it were public knowledge.
      • Retric 4y ago
        That’s the kind of thing that’s useful for some random blogger’s personal domain and largely academic at Google’s scale.
• coldpie 4y ago
  > This is my problem with de facto utilities that are not regulated like utilities. No, this is your problem with monopolies. The fix is anti-trust enforcement, not slapping the word "utility" around.
  • rnk 4y ago
    Antitrust enforcement is so scattershot, varying over time and depending on current us administration. It's like an entire higher level of abstraction over the problem. And in practice we have extremely little antitrust enforcement in the us over the last 20 years. We'd have to theoretically fix antitrust enforcement, then eventually "market forces" would force google say, to improve customer service. Google is not going to change, they are one of the trillion dollar babies and they can just ignore us. Just like apple. What anti-trust enforcement could cause them to change? I'm skeptical the new EU rules about how "open install of apps to breakup app-store monopolies" will work to effect change.
    • adamc 4y ago
      Google should be broken up and forced to change.
      • astrange 4y ago
        Google ads are a natural monopoly, like power lines. What are you going to do, go to 1/3 of its ad customers and tell them they're switching to Southwestern Google while another 1/3 have to switch to Pacific Google?
        • parasubvert 4y ago
          This assumes Google search - the main reason they have a business - will remain popular. That’s a very big assumption. Google’s monopoly isn’t “natural”. It’s temporary.
          • astrange 4y ago
• Iv 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • permo-w 4y ago
    use the word public and everyone gets behind you, use the word government and watch them waver
• Spooky23 4y ago
  Companies need to manage risk. Presumably cards like this present a larger risk. Perhaps Brex is miscategorized as a privacy card.
  • mrtksn 4y ago
    Sure, I have no objection on that. The problem is that they don't communicate it and you need to guess. With Google, you don't have someone explaining you what's the problem and what you can do to fix it.
    • kelnos 4y ago
      Right, and even if it's true that disclosing the detailed reason for a ban would hurt their security posture (I doubt it), I think in most cases it should be pretty obvious when the person disputing a suspension is just someone who got caught in the algorithmic crossfire. But expending even the smallest amount of effort to determine that isn't something Google feels like spending time or money on.
• jeroen 4y ago
  > Google can have enormous impact on your business and personal life Only if you let them. Life without a Google account doesn’t require meaningful sacrifice.
  • llanowarelves 4y ago
    Neither did life without Standard Oil.
• parasubvert 4y ago
  This is a recipe for a dystopian bureaucratic nightmare . As soon as it's illegal to make design mistakes, there will be no more innovation or updates, everything stays exactly as it is. The Department of Design Friendliness will audit you quarterly. Improvements get designed and approved by government committees. It's like a scene out of the movie Brazil. There seems to be this mindset of a certain class of folks that feel these companies [Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, Netflix, etc.] are somehow entrenched for centuries and the only option . They're not. They're barely 20 years old in most cases. That's nothing historically speaking. A third of them will be failing into niches over the next decade. Capitalism sucks in many ways, but it is really good at "creative destruction". True monopoly power is rare. Many are extremely vulnerable to disruptive competition as most of their revenue is from a single source: ads. Take that away, and they crumble. As Facebook and Twitter are discovering now that Apple/iOS default to blocked app tracking. Google search quality has plummeted and people are turning to alternatives like Reddit. Microsoft, Apple, Amazon are less vulnerable to ads, but they too have vulnerabilities. Google isn't a utility: you don't need to use it, nor do most people. Google search is dying in favour of alternatives like Reddit. Google mail is only one of many options. Android phones are only one of many options. The solution for a better service is to build (if you're an entrepreneur) and use (if you're a consumer) better services!
  • hellotomyrars 4y ago
    This is such a naive take on this issue. Just because it is possible to live without Google doesn’t make it easy. Even if you try to actively avoid all of these companies you’re still going to most likely end up with your data harvested via third parties fed back into their machine meaning you’re still padding their bottom line. People are not going to suddenly switch to Linux on the desktop or Google-services free android forks en masse because they’re demanding better services. Maybe they die and get replaced but in between that happening you are still having to deal with the realities of the situation you are currently. People just want shit that works and for most of them it does most of the time. But some people get absolutely fucked and there is no good excuse for it.
    • 4y ago
• scarface74 4y ago
  Then don’t do that? There is absolutely nothing that Google offers that you can’t get from somewhere else.
• Abishek_Muthian 4y ago
  I agree, We need legal measures. Imagine OP getting the Google Account itself banned then the only hope is to write a blog and pray that it makes to the front page of HN. It's ludicrous that we've accepted that if the Internet service is operating at scale, There would be no mechanism in place to address the customer's grievances even if that customer is an advertiser. The first time I tried using Microsoft Ads, I used a debit card in which foreign payments wasn't enabled and as soon as I clicked make payment my account was banned, No recourse through support just like how OP faced with Google. But that was in my past life, I don't want to see Ads, So I don't show Ads now. I've been unable to close my Facebook Account, Because I couldn't take backup of my business page and there's no way to reach to them.
• benj111 4y ago
  The GDPR is useless though because they don't tell you why. You're just left guessing as to what the problem may have been, not that you can do anything even if you did know. I've had the same problem with eBay. Problem is it encourages the very behaviour they want to stop. If you're going to have an account thats central to your business, but can get shut down at any time, it just encourages burner accounts so you aren't left high and dry when the inevitable happens.
• hattmall 4y ago
  Any company with revenue greater than a certain amount, like a billion a year, or even way less, should fall into some category of public regulation that sets certain standards for consumer support.
  • Symmetry 4y ago
    If we have governments specifying what a company does in those circumstances, wouldn't you expect that they would mandate that Google not accept these credit cards? Accepting them sort of flies in the face of the whole "Know your customer" approach that it seems like every government is promoting.
    • ngvrnd 4y ago
      Maybe, but that would be better than accepting them and then doing this.
  • verisimi 4y ago
    Why on earth would Google pay lobbiests to write legislation like that for the government to make into law?! It's against their interests!
    • fmajid 4y ago
      Not necessarily. Regulatory burdens ore more onerous on insurgents than on incumbents.
  • scarface74 4y ago
    Yes because giving government more power can never go wrong.
  • chimen 4y ago
    I would not place it by revenue but by amount of customers served
    • marcosdumay 4y ago