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> Now, of course, I understand that even Google can't reasonably be expected to provide free 24/7 customer support for the entire Internet. If they had a normal

> Now, of course, I understand that even Google can't reasonably be expected to provide free 24/7 customer support for the entire Internet. If they had a normal phone number available where anybody could reach a human at any time, every confused person would call them with issues that are completely unrelated to Google's actual products and even Google would be overwhelmed. No it is entirely reasonable. Even with a decline this quarter, Alphabet is sitting on ~$116 Billion cash on hand. Spending $1B on customer service would be trivial. They won't though, because end-users are not the customers of Google, advertisers are. You can betcha advertisers get excellent customer service.

glogla 4y ago
> They won't though, because end-users are not the customers of Google, advertisers are. You can betcha advertisers get excellent customer service. You would think so, but no. Even advertisers get bad support from Google. Even companies using Google as replacement for Microsoft stack (Gmail and Calendar instead of Outlook, etc) get bad support from Google. Even Google Cloud customers spending millions a year get bad support from Google. The terrible support might have started for the reasons you mention, but it turn into whole organization dysfunction.
- TechBro8615 4y ago
  This is just not true from my experience. Google Cloud has proactive and responsive support staff.
  - kenjackson 4y ago
    It might be a relative perspective they had. I've heard that AWS and Azure provide much better support. I can't say firsthand, but I've heard that fairly consistently.
    - toddreedy 4y ago
      The joke we had was AWS has better support, Google had better products, and MS had better sales.
- sidewndr46 4y ago
  Even websites using Google's advertising platform to serve those advertisements get horrible support.
- wedn3sday 4y ago
  Can confirm. I work for a company that spends >$10MM on google cloud compute every year, and it's a common internal joke that "talk to google support" means "get fucked." Their support is outrageously bad.
deleted 4y ago
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arbuge 4y ago
> They won't though, because end-users are not the customers of Google, advertisers are. You can betcha advertisers get excellent customer service. Have you ever advertised on Google? I'm guessing not. Go search on Reddit and other places for stories from people who got their Google Ads accounts banned, including advertisers spending millions of dollars a year, and see how much help from customer service they've gotten. Excellent might not be the word that comes to mind after you've been through that exercise.
tbran 4y ago
Yeah, WTH. The Reddit thread is about a transaction involving money. Google can't do better support than ineffective, then incorrect, directions? Furthermore, if Google is going to shove search, email, maps, Chrome, ChromeOS, Play Store, Android, etc, etc, etc, down our throats maybe they should be made to actually do a little customer service.
foobazgt 4y ago
I think that's a sore underestimation of the support costs Google would have to cover. It looks like support costs average around $4/call. (https://www.google.com/search?q=how+much+does+the+average+support+call+cost https://www.google.com/search?q=how+much+does+the+average+su...). Google has approximately 4 billion users (https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+users+does+Google+have https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+users+does+Google+h...). So, if you allowed for one single support call per user per year, Google would be footing $16B annually. In general, I don't think you can expect free support for a free product. I do think businesses should let you buy support for any tier of product, both as part of a subscription and on a one-time basis.
- Retric 4y ago
  That’s at 98 cents per minute, I suspect at google’s scale they would have massive cost savings.
  - foobazgt 4y ago
    Savings from scale usually comes from automation, and people are generally looking to talk to humans, not bots. This is the exact reason Google avoids human support in the first place - there are no massive cost savings, because it does not scale well.
    - Retric 4y ago
      There’s a lot to automate when doing phone support. The vast difference between the sub 20 cents per minute you need to pay people to answer phones and the 98 cents per minute each call costs are largely things that could be automated. And that’s ignoring trying to minimize call length or even the need for any calls in the first place.
      - foobazgt 4y ago
        There are definite cost reductions that can be made, but they pale in comparison to keeping humans out of the loop. For sake of argument, let's pretend you can shave half off the costs. So, now we're talking $8B annually for one support call / user / year. Does this undermine my argument about under-estimation of $1B costs?
FredPret 4y ago
Advertisers are not getting any customer service from Google, at all. I've had accounts locked for no reason, ads cut off, etc. Their ad platform is so confusing, I had to take a Udemy course just to make head or tails of it. This is besides the fact that their ads are nowhere near as effective as on other platforms.

glogla 4y ago

> They won't though, because end-users are not the customers of Google, advertisers are. You can betcha advertisers get excellent customer service. You would think so, but no. Even advertisers get bad support from Google. Even companies using Google as replacement for Microsoft stack (Gmail and Calendar instead of Outlook, etc) get bad support from Google. Even Google Cloud customers spending millions a year get bad support from Google. The terrible support might have started for the reasons you mention, but it turn into whole organization dysfunction.

TechBro8615 4y ago
This is just not true from my experience. Google Cloud has proactive and responsive support staff.
- kenjackson 4y ago
  It might be a relative perspective they had. I've heard that AWS and Azure provide much better support. I can't say firsthand, but I've heard that fairly consistently.
  - toddreedy 4y ago
    The joke we had was AWS has better support, Google had better products, and MS had better sales.
sidewndr46 4y ago
Even websites using Google's advertising platform to serve those advertisements get horrible support.
wedn3sday 4y ago
Can confirm. I work for a company that spends >$10MM on google cloud compute every year, and it's a common internal joke that "talk to google support" means "get fucked." Their support is outrageously bad.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

arbuge 4y ago

> They won't though, because end-users are not the customers of Google, advertisers are. You can betcha advertisers get excellent customer service. Have you ever advertised on Google? I'm guessing not. Go search on Reddit and other places for stories from people who got their Google Ads accounts banned, including advertisers spending millions of dollars a year, and see how much help from customer service they've gotten. Excellent might not be the word that comes to mind after you've been through that exercise.

tbran 4y ago

Yeah, WTH. The Reddit thread is about a transaction involving money. Google can't do better support than ineffective, then incorrect, directions? Furthermore, if Google is going to shove search, email, maps, Chrome, ChromeOS, Play Store, Android, etc, etc, etc, down our throats maybe they should be made to actually do a little customer service.

foobazgt 4y ago

I think that's a sore underestimation of the support costs Google would have to cover. It looks like support costs average around $4/call. (https://www.google.com/search?q=how+much+does+the+average+support+call+cost https://www.google.com/search?q=how+much+does+the+average+su...). Google has approximately 4 billion users (https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+users+does+Google+have https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+users+does+Google+h...). So, if you allowed for one single support call per user per year, Google would be footing $16B annually. In general, I don't think you can expect free support for a free product. I do think businesses should let you buy support for any tier of product, both as part of a subscription and on a one-time basis.

Retric 4y ago
That’s at 98 cents per minute, I suspect at google’s scale they would have massive cost savings.
- foobazgt 4y ago
  Savings from scale usually comes from automation, and people are generally looking to talk to humans, not bots. This is the exact reason Google avoids human support in the first place - there are no massive cost savings, because it does not scale well.
  - Retric 4y ago
    There’s a lot to automate when doing phone support. The vast difference between the sub 20 cents per minute you need to pay people to answer phones and the 98 cents per minute each call costs are largely things that could be automated. And that’s ignoring trying to minimize call length or even the need for any calls in the first place.
    - foobazgt 4y ago
      There are definite cost reductions that can be made, but they pale in comparison to keeping humans out of the loop. For sake of argument, let's pretend you can shave half off the costs. So, now we're talking $8B annually for one support call / user / year. Does this undermine my argument about under-estimation of $1B costs?

FredPret 4y ago

Advertisers are not getting any customer service from Google, at all. I've had accounts locked for no reason, ads cut off, etc. Their ad platform is so confusing, I had to take a Udemy course just to make head or tails of it. This is besides the fact that their ads are nowhere near as effective as on other platforms.