4 ms·

Google is famous for basically just ignoring customers. Or more accurately, ignoring users, since users are not customers. Customers are those spending money p

Google is famous for basically just ignoring customers. Or more accurately, ignoring users, since users are not customers. Customers are those spending money posting ads on search. Frankly even they get crap customer support, but at least they are customers. I'm no googler but it's clear "user support" (and "customer support") are not priorities at google, and that means other people _are_ priorities. So it's not exactly a shock to discover employees optimize to make other employees happy (measured) versus keeping users happy (not measured.) I factor that in when I decide if I want to be more than a user, if I want to be a customer. (So far the answer is basically "no".) And, as a user, I understand I'm not a customer and Google doesn't care about me, or my gmail account... So I treat my gmail account with the importance it deserves. So what though? This makes them happy, and they're all paid, so what does it matter what the outside world think or care?

motoboi 4y ago
I have been a enterprise customer of google cloud. There is a chasm between google cloud and microsoft azure. Azure sucks as a product, but they really, really, really want you as costumer. Damn, I get a weekly one-to-one with the guy which was part of the team that created their kubernetes offering, just because I needed someone with expertise in the matter to help us maximize the benefit or ours. NO EXTRA COST. With Google I got a guy that knows Kubernetes less than me. I sometimes get embarrassed asking them questions because they don't know how to answer but must come up with something to answer because the account manager is in the call. It feels like their poor account managers take a uphill battle just to get someone to talk to us. I feel sorry for them. Guess what happens? must deployments are in azure, even if the azure CLI sucks, the azure portal is a mess and azure products are inconsistent. But Google's GKE ingress takes 20 minutes to update (there is a years old bug opened, nobody cares), vs Azure application gateway taking 30 seconds. Both being very bad for us, but I get to talk to the Microsoft the guy who worked on that integration and discussing with him the pros and cons of using ingress-nginx instead. Google don't want us as costumers, they just want to brag about having a better cloud (they don't). (as a PS, please microsoft your employees don't like to answer questions on stack overflow. But great to be able to get stackoverflow answers from the product managers).
- dekhn 4y ago
  if you're on a call with an account manager and a support person, and the support person is clueless, politely shut down the meeting early, and then schedule a 10-minute with the account manager to tell them the support person isn't helping. As much as I hate personal relations, I frequently have to "herd cats" (contractors and cloud vendors). On the other hand, once in the while I get an absolute superstar and I work to keep them on my projects as long as possible.
  - motoboi 4y ago
    Yeah, this is what they can give me. Microsoft people offered us high profile people for free.
- com2kid 4y ago
  > Azure sucks as a product, but they really, really, really want you as costumer. Damn, I get a weekly one-to-one with the guy which was part of the team that created their kubernetes offering, just because I needed someone with expertise in the matter to help us maximize the benefit or ours. NO EXTRA COST. When I was at Microsoft, the highest tier of support contract got you meetings with the lead developers of whatever product you found a pri0 bug in. Found a way to crash the compiler and simple code changes weren't enough to work around it? A meeting with a member of the C++ compiler team would be arranged. Microsoft has a history of customer focus, though I fear that was very much diluted when MS got rid of their dedicated test orgs.
  - wbsun 4y ago
    How does that scale if there are many customers that need to meet the lead developers like OP get in weekly 1:1?
- garisingh 4y ago
  Sorry to hear about your experience thus far. I'm actually on the GKE team. Happy to find some time to chat and get you in touch with the right folks from the GKE networking team. DM me on Twitter at @garitweets and we can connect.
rwmj 4y ago
They don't seem to care about their corporate customers either. eg. corporate gmail spam filtering is fundamentally broken and no one seems to be able to do anything about it.
nico 4y ago
My companies have been google customers for years, have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with them, they’ve never cared about us. Bad service and sometimes impossible to reach a person.
- zie 4y ago
  You are not a big customer to Google.
  - nnurmanov 4y ago
    Ah-ah. I am sure even if you had millions of $ in support fees, they still won't care about you. You have to have pay more, get a dedicated accounts team and let them manage issues internally.
    - zie 4y ago
      Millions? That's not even in the right ballpark for them to notice one way or another. Google brought in around $284B in 2022, Big customers are at least double digits, so for Google, one needs to spend at least ~ 30B/yr to be considered a big customer to them.
  - XargonEnder 4y ago
    I work for a company that has spent billions of dollars on Google ads in the last decade and it doesn't seem like we're a big customer either.
    - zie 4y ago
      Sorry to break it to you, but you are not a big customer to Google either. Let's assume that billions is actually 99B. So roughly 10B/yr. This is roughly 4% of their income in a year(~ 284B in 2022). Big customers are at least double digit % of their income.
      - tilolebo 4y ago

motoboi 4y ago

I have been a enterprise customer of google cloud. There is a chasm between google cloud and microsoft azure. Azure sucks as a product, but they really, really, really want you as costumer. Damn, I get a weekly one-to-one with the guy which was part of the team that created their kubernetes offering, just because I needed someone with expertise in the matter to help us maximize the benefit or ours. NO EXTRA COST. With Google I got a guy that knows Kubernetes less than me. I sometimes get embarrassed asking them questions because they don't know how to answer but must come up with something to answer because the account manager is in the call. It feels like their poor account managers take a uphill battle just to get someone to talk to us. I feel sorry for them. Guess what happens? must deployments are in azure, even if the azure CLI sucks, the azure portal is a mess and azure products are inconsistent. But Google's GKE ingress takes 20 minutes to update (there is a years old bug opened, nobody cares), vs Azure application gateway taking 30 seconds. Both being very bad for us, but I get to talk to the Microsoft the guy who worked on that integration and discussing with him the pros and cons of using ingress-nginx instead. Google don't want us as costumers, they just want to brag about having a better cloud (they don't). (as a PS, please microsoft your employees don't like to answer questions on stack overflow. But great to be able to get stackoverflow answers from the product managers).

dekhn 4y ago
if you're on a call with an account manager and a support person, and the support person is clueless, politely shut down the meeting early, and then schedule a 10-minute with the account manager to tell them the support person isn't helping. As much as I hate personal relations, I frequently have to "herd cats" (contractors and cloud vendors). On the other hand, once in the while I get an absolute superstar and I work to keep them on my projects as long as possible.
- motoboi 4y ago
  Yeah, this is what they can give me. Microsoft people offered us high profile people for free.
com2kid 4y ago
> Azure sucks as a product, but they really, really, really want you as costumer. Damn, I get a weekly one-to-one with the guy which was part of the team that created their kubernetes offering, just because I needed someone with expertise in the matter to help us maximize the benefit or ours. NO EXTRA COST. When I was at Microsoft, the highest tier of support contract got you meetings with the lead developers of whatever product you found a pri0 bug in. Found a way to crash the compiler and simple code changes weren't enough to work around it? A meeting with a member of the C++ compiler team would be arranged. Microsoft has a history of customer focus, though I fear that was very much diluted when MS got rid of their dedicated test orgs.
- wbsun 4y ago
  How does that scale if there are many customers that need to meet the lead developers like OP get in weekly 1:1?
garisingh 4y ago
Sorry to hear about your experience thus far. I'm actually on the GKE team. Happy to find some time to chat and get you in touch with the right folks from the GKE networking team. DM me on Twitter at @garitweets and we can connect.

rwmj 4y ago

They don't seem to care about their corporate customers either. eg. corporate gmail spam filtering is fundamentally broken and no one seems to be able to do anything about it.

nico 4y ago

My companies have been google customers for years, have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with them, they’ve never cared about us. Bad service and sometimes impossible to reach a person.

zie 4y ago
You are not a big customer to Google.
- nnurmanov 4y ago
  Ah-ah. I am sure even if you had millions of $ in support fees, they still won't care about you. You have to have pay more, get a dedicated accounts team and let them manage issues internally.
  - zie 4y ago
    Millions? That's not even in the right ballpark for them to notice one way or another. Google brought in around $284B in 2022, Big customers are at least double digits, so for Google, one needs to spend at least ~ 30B/yr to be considered a big customer to them.
- XargonEnder 4y ago
  I work for a company that has spent billions of dollars on Google ads in the last decade and it doesn't seem like we're a big customer either.
  - zie 4y ago
    Sorry to break it to you, but you are not a big customer to Google either. Let's assume that billions is actually 99B. So roughly 10B/yr. This is roughly 4% of their income in a year(~ 284B in 2022). Big customers are at least double digit % of their income.
    - tilolebo 4y ago