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Hard to disagree with any of the points Stallman listed but this stood out as especially egregious and petty. >Google cuts off accounts for users that resell P

Hard to disagree with any of the points Stallman listed but this stood out as especially egregious and petty. >Google cuts off accounts for users that resell Pixel phones [0]. They lose access to all of their mail and documents stored in Google servers under that account. >It should be illegal to put any "terms of service" on a physical product. It should also be illegal to close an account on a service without letting the user download whatever was stored there. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/17/google-suspends-customer-accounts-for-reselling-pixel-phones https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/17/google-su...

lambdasquirrel 4y ago
Yeah that's pretty bad... I've given away two of the phones I've owned. Would I have gotten my GMail accounts cut off for that?
- op00to 4y ago
  No.
doodlesdev 4y ago
Wait, what? You think users shouldn't have the right to resell hardware _they bought_? Can you clarify further what you disagree with here? edit: Oh I misread, I thought you disagreed with him, sorry.
Alupis 4y ago
You make it sound like someone sold their used Pixel phone on Craigslist and then had their Gmail account banned - that's not what happened. The Google customers had all bought the phones from the company’s Project Fi mobile carrier, and had them shipped directly to a reseller in New Hampshire, a US state with no sales tax. In return, the reseller split the profit with the customers. Such an arrangement is against Google’s terms of service, which state that customers “may only purchase Devices for your personal use [and] may not commercially resell any Device”. From what I gather, a bunch of users bought heavily-subsidized phones intended for Google-Fi customers, shipped them to a commercial reseller who sold them at regular prices, then split the profit of a couple hundred bucks per phone. Doesn't sound very savory to me.
- ochoseis 4y ago
  I agree it sounds like a violation of the terms, but the response seems asymmetrical to me. Banning them from using Project Fi in the future would be more appropriate.
  - Alupis 4y ago
    Sure, perhaps asymmetrical. It also happened 7 years ago, and there's no similar stories I could readily find since. Perhaps Google also thought it was asymmetrical and scaled things back privately... I also would easily believe these users probably didn't just buy a phone, and likely were using their personal Gmail account as a defacto business account - Pixel Arbitrage, as it were. In that light, banning the account outright makes some sense, even if it feels heavy-handed.
- ashwagary 4y ago
  “I think Google should have banned them from future purchases, but taking away all Google services seems very draconian to me,” Eleff added. “Not allowing access to past data is even worse.” I think most Google account owners would agree with the above sentiment.
- morpheuskafka 4y ago
  The next claims is also misleading: "It should be illegal to put any "terms of service" on a physical product." As you said, the issue is not that Google claimed some sort of ongoing right to block resale of the phone in the ToS, but simply that it refused to sell the phone to resellers to begin with. That's not attaching a ToS to a physical product, but just choosing who to take orders from.
  - whatshisface 4y ago
    Companies should not be running an internal justice department to sanction, through unrelated business wings, individuals who they have a dispute with, at most they should stop holding up their end of that contract while taking their grievance to the real courts. The only case in which that wouldn't be an option is the one where the resellers breached neither a contract nor a law in which case... why does Google think it can act against them?
leros 4y ago
Google has too many services all linked to one account. Combined with their algorithmic banning of accounts, it is very scary. Having things like your YouTube account, email, business running on GSuite, servers running on Google Cloud, etc all tied to a single Google account that could get accidentally banned is terrifying. Sure, maybe Google bans you for selling a Pixel phone, but that doesn't just ban you from Pixel. You're locked out of your entire business. Or maybe Google bans you for making algorithmically determined bad comments on YouTube and now you're locked out of your entire business. I find that entirely unacceptable. They should really set up boundaries between various services and/or improve the ability to appeal account bans.

lambdasquirrel 4y ago

Yeah that's pretty bad... I've given away two of the phones I've owned. Would I have gotten my GMail accounts cut off for that?

op00to 4y ago
No.

doodlesdev 4y ago

Wait, what? You think users shouldn't have the right to resell hardware _they bought_? Can you clarify further what you disagree with here? edit: Oh I misread, I thought you disagreed with him, sorry.

Alupis 4y ago

You make it sound like someone sold their used Pixel phone on Craigslist and then had their Gmail account banned - that's not what happened. The Google customers had all bought the phones from the company’s Project Fi mobile carrier, and had them shipped directly to a reseller in New Hampshire, a US state with no sales tax. In return, the reseller split the profit with the customers. Such an arrangement is against Google’s terms of service, which state that customers “may only purchase Devices for your personal use [and] may not commercially resell any Device”. From what I gather, a bunch of users bought heavily-subsidized phones intended for Google-Fi customers, shipped them to a commercial reseller who sold them at regular prices, then split the profit of a couple hundred bucks per phone. Doesn't sound very savory to me.

ochoseis 4y ago
I agree it sounds like a violation of the terms, but the response seems asymmetrical to me. Banning them from using Project Fi in the future would be more appropriate.
- Alupis 4y ago
  Sure, perhaps asymmetrical. It also happened 7 years ago, and there's no similar stories I could readily find since. Perhaps Google also thought it was asymmetrical and scaled things back privately... I also would easily believe these users probably didn't just buy a phone, and likely were using their personal Gmail account as a defacto business account - Pixel Arbitrage, as it were. In that light, banning the account outright makes some sense, even if it feels heavy-handed.
ashwagary 4y ago
“I think Google should have banned them from future purchases, but taking away all Google services seems very draconian to me,” Eleff added. “Not allowing access to past data is even worse.” I think most Google account owners would agree with the above sentiment.
morpheuskafka 4y ago
The next claims is also misleading: "It should be illegal to put any "terms of service" on a physical product." As you said, the issue is not that Google claimed some sort of ongoing right to block resale of the phone in the ToS, but simply that it refused to sell the phone to resellers to begin with. That's not attaching a ToS to a physical product, but just choosing who to take orders from.
- whatshisface 4y ago
  Companies should not be running an internal justice department to sanction, through unrelated business wings, individuals who they have a dispute with, at most they should stop holding up their end of that contract while taking their grievance to the real courts. The only case in which that wouldn't be an option is the one where the resellers breached neither a contract nor a law in which case... why does Google think it can act against them?

leros 4y ago

Google has too many services all linked to one account. Combined with their algorithmic banning of accounts, it is very scary. Having things like your YouTube account, email, business running on GSuite, servers running on Google Cloud, etc all tied to a single Google account that could get accidentally banned is terrifying. Sure, maybe Google bans you for selling a Pixel phone, but that doesn't just ban you from Pixel. You're locked out of your entire business. Or maybe Google bans you for making algorithmically determined bad comments on YouTube and now you're locked out of your entire business. I find that entirely unacceptable. They should really set up boundaries between various services and/or improve the ability to appeal account bans.