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B-b-but Google made this fancy video advertisement about how I can give my infant daughter a Gmail account and write to her as she grows up! Does it only work i

B-b-but Google made this fancy video advertisement about how I can give my infant daughter a Gmail account and write to her as she grows up! Does it only work if she never uses it? You've gotta wait until you can hold a bat mitzvah to hand it off to her? This kind of chicanery is why I can only chuckle when Google announces new initiatives that require significant customer service, like selling telephones or providing a fulfillment system to compete with Amazon Prime. They treat their users like ants. And given the way their business is structured, that scale is about correct. Google doesn't need for any given user of their service to be pleased. They're a whale, straining krill from the ocean, playing a vast advertising numbers game on a scale individuals can barely grasp, and can barely factor into. Which is not an illegitimate position. But it poses a problem for individuals who are swept into its gaping maw - there is zero incentive machinery to compel Google to ever get things corrected. Depending on where a product is on its growth curve, it might even cost Google more to fix the problem than to replace the users. Your only recourse is to hope for enough public embarrassment to short-circuit the system. It also calls into question the viability of their entry into any business where service is a differentiating characteristic.

yanw 15y ago
That is not entirely fair, automation is the only way to admin millions of users and when nonsensical factors like COPPA get introduced to the system this happens. And I don't think that they did anything wrong here considering the consequences of not complying with the law.
- danilocampos 15y ago
  The fact that it makes Google look bad doesn't impact its fairness. I acknowledged that that's not an illegitimate way to run the business. But that doesn't really matter to a little girl whose correspondence with loved ones has disappeared down a black hole. That despair is as reasonable as Google's indifference. And, it points to a great opportunity to make a reliable mail service that addresses the needs of the ever-growing population of young people who will need email long before it is regulatorily convenient to Google.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- biot 15y ago
  Disney manages to provide good customer service for the millions of real-life humans that walk its theme parks annually. Google's problem is not that it can't be done, but that it's unprofitable to provide customer service when your business model consists of making a few pennies here and there.
  - justinhj 15y ago
    Disney also does the same with tens of millions of online kids with Club Penguin
  - jonknee 15y ago
    That's a terrible analogy and if you want to go there, Disney has made plenty of little girls cry every day.
    - biot 15y ago
      I'm addressing the claim that automation is the only way to service millions of users. Whether people cry despite having the ability to receive personalized service is orthogonal to the point.
      - jonknee 15y ago
        If Google charged hundreds of dollars for each user they could surely afford a bubbly teenager to provide personalized service too. They're completely separate businesses and models, there is no comparing the two.
- joemoon 15y ago
  From the post: > They provide COPPA compliant email accounts for children under 13 from their Apps for Education domains. The capability is obviously there, and apparently COPPA has a way for parents to provide consent.
- einhverfr 15y ago
  So here's where the problem occurs with the law and Google's business model. Android...... Where does it say anywhere that Android devices can only be sold to those old enough not to be covered by COPPA?
- maigret 15y ago
  Amazon has quite an awesome service actually for the few times I had to deal with them. They also have quite a few users. Oh, but right, those are actually customers paying for what they get. I guess Google support is what you get for using a free service after all.
  - landhar 15y ago
    In many ways, we are paying customers of Google as well. We are exchanging very valuable data for Google's services.
csmt 15y ago
This is absurd. Instead of not collecting data for children Google is blocking access to children. I am seriously looking for alternatives to Gmail. Any suggestions? I don't want my email account hooked up to a social network and advertising machinery.
- eli 15y ago
  It's a bit more complex than that. In order to comply, Google would need to verify that you are a parent/guardian and that you are giving permission for your child to join. Faxing of identity documents would likely be involved. Google's approach is heavy handed, but it's a really bad law.
  - mpclark 15y ago
    What we need is for big, well funded companies to somehow use their influence to get bad laws changed...
    - fpgeek 15y ago
      But the only thing in politics more powerful than corporate money is "For the children!!!"...
      - greyfade 15y ago
        That, and "or the terrorists win!"
- danilocampos 15y ago
  It seems like a very straightforward solution to me. If an account is created for a person under-age, suspend ad service to that account (end data collection) and require a nominal fee to activate it (which provides abundant evidence of parental consent). Cutting off the next generation from email does not seem like the answer. Would a Montessori-educated, eight-year-old Sergey Brin have appreciated such treatment? Since that won't happen, I mean, when we have kids I guess we just have to pay for hosting and administer their email ourselves?
unabridged 15y ago
their time as innovative and useful is coming to a halt. they have nearly zero incentive any more to improve, even in their core products. search results everyday become more and more polluted with seo spam. google maps hasn't changed in years, still the same blocky loading and no useful overlays like demographic data built right in.
- eurleif 15y ago
  >google maps hasn't changed in years, still the same blocky loading MapsGL. http://support.google.com/maps/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1630790 http://support.google.com/maps/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe...
- fpgeek 15y ago
  Indoor maps? Not to mention this whole Google Maps on your phone thing (and navigation on your Android phone)...
magicalist 15y ago
It may feel like the Googles and the Facebooks are self-sustaining juggernauts, but customer happiness and retention is exactly the incentive machinery you are missing. Everyone plays the balance game. You can have the best customer service in the world, but my daughter is still going to cry if your moving company breaks her stuff, or your store sells us tainted dog food, or your family-run email service writes the wrong data to the backup tapes just before a failure. Amazon might be awesome in terms of rates of well handled customers, but Google is doing pretty well, maw metaphors notwithstanding. edit: it's really the rates of bad experiences/customer I'm talking about. There's another side of things, that of, bad experiences/customer with a problem, which Amazon is better at (in a market that isn't really comparable to the one in which google's services primarily reside, of course). On the other hand, Bezos's often cited goal of every call that has to be made to customer service being a bug to be fixed is exactly google's goal, it just sounds a lot better when there's still a number you could call.
- CamperBob 15y ago
  It may feel like the Googles and the Facebooks are self-sustaining juggernauts, but customer happiness and retention is exactly the incentive machinery you are missing. Except we're not their customers.
  - william42 15y ago
    Yeah, but if we leave, then the advertisers(their "real customers") will too, so it works out the same.
    - danilocampos 15y ago
      It really doesn't. Advertisers have committed budgets and have switching costs that are often much, much higher than those of end users. It would take a sustained, double-digit-percentage loss of users to impact Google's bottom line. One user fucked over out of 1,000, even if they never return, is pretty easy to paper over. Which is why there's no phone number a user can call if they're in trouble. They don't really matter, so it's not worth the cost to address their issue. AdWords advertisers, on the other hand, they can get a human on the phone whenever they want. Because if they have an issue, it's honest-to-god cash money that stops flowing into Google's coffers. They're the real customers.
cynwoody 15y ago
This would seem to have more to do with the 535 dumbest people on the planet than with Google.

yanw 15y ago

That is not entirely fair, automation is the only way to admin millions of users and when nonsensical factors like COPPA get introduced to the system this happens. And I don't think that they did anything wrong here considering the consequences of not complying with the law.

danilocampos 15y ago
The fact that it makes Google look bad doesn't impact its fairness. I acknowledged that that's not an illegitimate way to run the business. But that doesn't really matter to a little girl whose correspondence with loved ones has disappeared down a black hole. That despair is as reasonable as Google's indifference. And, it points to a great opportunity to make a reliable mail service that addresses the needs of the ever-growing population of young people who will need email long before it is regulatorily convenient to Google.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
biot 15y ago
Disney manages to provide good customer service for the millions of real-life humans that walk its theme parks annually. Google's problem is not that it can't be done, but that it's unprofitable to provide customer service when your business model consists of making a few pennies here and there.
- justinhj 15y ago
  Disney also does the same with tens of millions of online kids with Club Penguin
- jonknee 15y ago
  That's a terrible analogy and if you want to go there, Disney has made plenty of little girls cry every day.
  - biot 15y ago
    I'm addressing the claim that automation is the only way to service millions of users. Whether people cry despite having the ability to receive personalized service is orthogonal to the point.
    - jonknee 15y ago
      If Google charged hundreds of dollars for each user they could surely afford a bubbly teenager to provide personalized service too. They're completely separate businesses and models, there is no comparing the two.
joemoon 15y ago
From the post: > They provide COPPA compliant email accounts for children under 13 from their Apps for Education domains. The capability is obviously there, and apparently COPPA has a way for parents to provide consent.
einhverfr 15y ago
So here's where the problem occurs with the law and Google's business model. Android...... Where does it say anywhere that Android devices can only be sold to those old enough not to be covered by COPPA?
maigret 15y ago
Amazon has quite an awesome service actually for the few times I had to deal with them. They also have quite a few users. Oh, but right, those are actually customers paying for what they get. I guess Google support is what you get for using a free service after all.
- landhar 15y ago
  In many ways, we are paying customers of Google as well. We are exchanging very valuable data for Google's services.

csmt 15y ago

This is absurd. Instead of not collecting data for children Google is blocking access to children. I am seriously looking for alternatives to Gmail. Any suggestions? I don't want my email account hooked up to a social network and advertising machinery.

eli 15y ago
It's a bit more complex than that. In order to comply, Google would need to verify that you are a parent/guardian and that you are giving permission for your child to join. Faxing of identity documents would likely be involved. Google's approach is heavy handed, but it's a really bad law.
- mpclark 15y ago
  What we need is for big, well funded companies to somehow use their influence to get bad laws changed...
  - fpgeek 15y ago
    But the only thing in politics more powerful than corporate money is "For the children!!!"...
    - greyfade 15y ago
      That, and "or the terrorists win!"
danilocampos 15y ago
It seems like a very straightforward solution to me. If an account is created for a person under-age, suspend ad service to that account (end data collection) and require a nominal fee to activate it (which provides abundant evidence of parental consent). Cutting off the next generation from email does not seem like the answer. Would a Montessori-educated, eight-year-old Sergey Brin have appreciated such treatment? Since that won't happen, I mean, when we have kids I guess we just have to pay for hosting and administer their email ourselves?

unabridged 15y ago

their time as innovative and useful is coming to a halt. they have nearly zero incentive any more to improve, even in their core products. search results everyday become more and more polluted with seo spam. google maps hasn't changed in years, still the same blocky loading and no useful overlays like demographic data built right in.

eurleif 15y ago
>google maps hasn't changed in years, still the same blocky loading MapsGL. http://support.google.com/maps/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1630790 http://support.google.com/maps/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe...
fpgeek 15y ago
Indoor maps? Not to mention this whole Google Maps on your phone thing (and navigation on your Android phone)...

magicalist 15y ago

It may feel like the Googles and the Facebooks are self-sustaining juggernauts, but customer happiness and retention is exactly the incentive machinery you are missing. Everyone plays the balance game. You can have the best customer service in the world, but my daughter is still going to cry if your moving company breaks her stuff, or your store sells us tainted dog food, or your family-run email service writes the wrong data to the backup tapes just before a failure. Amazon might be awesome in terms of rates of well handled customers, but Google is doing pretty well, maw metaphors notwithstanding. edit: it's really the rates of bad experiences/customer I'm talking about. There's another side of things, that of, bad experiences/customer with a problem, which Amazon is better at (in a market that isn't really comparable to the one in which google's services primarily reside, of course). On the other hand, Bezos's often cited goal of every call that has to be made to customer service being a bug to be fixed is exactly google's goal, it just sounds a lot better when there's still a number you could call.

CamperBob 15y ago
It may feel like the Googles and the Facebooks are self-sustaining juggernauts, but customer happiness and retention is exactly the incentive machinery you are missing. Except we're not their customers.
- william42 15y ago
  Yeah, but if we leave, then the advertisers(their "real customers") will too, so it works out the same.
  - danilocampos 15y ago
    It really doesn't. Advertisers have committed budgets and have switching costs that are often much, much higher than those of end users. It would take a sustained, double-digit-percentage loss of users to impact Google's bottom line. One user fucked over out of 1,000, even if they never return, is pretty easy to paper over. Which is why there's no phone number a user can call if they're in trouble. They don't really matter, so it's not worth the cost to address their issue. AdWords advertisers, on the other hand, they can get a human on the phone whenever they want. Because if they have an issue, it's honest-to-god cash money that stops flowing into Google's coffers. They're the real customers.

cynwoody 15y ago

This would seem to have more to do with the 535 dumbest people on the planet than with Google.