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Google's problem has always been customer support. Not just the process but the idea that your customers deserve to be supported when using your product. You s

Google's problem has always been customer support. Not just the process but the idea that your customers deserve to be supported when using your product. You shouldn't ask people to migrate before having a documented, tested, tool-assisted, clear and intuitive migration flow that takes very little time.

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
Allow me to drop this classic: https://steve-yegge.medium.com/dear-google-cloud-your-deprecation-policy-is-killing-you-ee7525dc05dc https://steve-yegge.medium.com/dear-google-cloud-your-deprec... (and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24165445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24165445 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38023392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38023392 ). Because yeah, "support" includes "are you going to keep making me do work just to keep using your platform". (Edit: To be clear, that's negative support, but it's on the same axis)
yawnxyz 2y ago
At least with Cloudflare they'll get back to you in five minutes as soon as you complain on HN
- usr1106 2y ago
  I don't know about the 5 minutes, but the CTO replied when I complained in some comment and asked me for a trace. That was extraordinary user service (I am not even a customer), but the problem has not really been solved some 3 months later after sending the trace. One error has been replaced by another one...
initplus 2y ago
I'm also completely sick of fielding API migration emails from Google on mobile Android/Firebase. Feel like I get some "action required" every couple of weeks. This stuff saps our resources, both to fix it, and to diagnose if the issue even applies to us in the first place. If you are lucky Google includes details of the app using the API, but often this part is even left out.
- jdance 2y ago
  Yeah the amount of disrespect of developer time they show here is crazy. You could have made the billing api backwards compatible for 10 years, its a super small api, but instead they force breaking changes every couple of years Maybe it is a strategy for cleaning up old apps or something, but I doubt it
notepad0x90 2y ago
I would say that Googlers are painfully aware of this. But the real problem is leadership. It starts with the CEO and various execs. Their employees are still living in the "growth hacking" and highly academic world (at least their engineers) and their execs are drunken with arrogance, convinced their Titanic will never sink. And they may be partially right, it may not sink but it will never regain its former glory. It will rot on the shelf, besides IBM,AT&T, HP and many more. At its core, alphabet is a services company, it does not sell goods (to the most part). Their board needs to decide if the company should focus on business services or consumer services and replace the executives with people who have experience in that area. The actual quality of GCP is superb in my opinion. They have a flair for architecting excellent solutions. I prefer GCP over any cloud from a purely technical perspective. Their leaders just don't get that it isn't enough. They're not operating a toy or a museum of technical marvels. Actual people need to use it.
- underdeserver 2y ago
  I worked on GCP, left Google about two years ago. Some Googlers are aware of this, fewer care, and fewer still act on it - you sort of have to be an insane employee* to do that. I saw tickets from high-paying, top-10 customers, go unanswered for days; no one senior enough on the team to answer felt it was more important than the day-to-day, and no one from the support/account executive staff felt they had the authority to demand it. I see it otherwise. I think solving customer support is crucial to GCP's success, and since I agree with you that GCP is the better underlying product, there is a deluge of money passing Google by, just waiting for the right executive team to start caring about this to pick it up. Kind of like Microsoft pre-Satya. * https://yosefk.com/blog/people-can-read-their-managers-mind.html https://yosefk.com/blog/people-can-read-their-managers-mind....
  - pm90 2y ago
    This is really sad to read. I agree with you that GCP has the superior product. Azure is a fucking joke. AWS sucks but they do respond to feedback and will even get engineers on a call with you if you hit certain edge cases. The level of apathy you describe will very quickly sour users.

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago

Allow me to drop this classic: https://steve-yegge.medium.com/dear-google-cloud-your-deprecation-policy-is-killing-you-ee7525dc05dc https://steve-yegge.medium.com/dear-google-cloud-your-deprec... (and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24165445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24165445 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38023392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38023392 ). Because yeah, "support" includes "are you going to keep making me do work just to keep using your platform". (Edit: To be clear, that's negative support, but it's on the same axis)

yawnxyz 2y ago

At least with Cloudflare they'll get back to you in five minutes as soon as you complain on HN

usr1106 2y ago
I don't know about the 5 minutes, but the CTO replied when I complained in some comment and asked me for a trace. That was extraordinary user service (I am not even a customer), but the problem has not really been solved some 3 months later after sending the trace. One error has been replaced by another one...

initplus 2y ago

I'm also completely sick of fielding API migration emails from Google on mobile Android/Firebase. Feel like I get some "action required" every couple of weeks. This stuff saps our resources, both to fix it, and to diagnose if the issue even applies to us in the first place. If you are lucky Google includes details of the app using the API, but often this part is even left out.

jdance 2y ago
Yeah the amount of disrespect of developer time they show here is crazy. You could have made the billing api backwards compatible for 10 years, its a super small api, but instead they force breaking changes every couple of years Maybe it is a strategy for cleaning up old apps or something, but I doubt it

notepad0x90 2y ago

I would say that Googlers are painfully aware of this. But the real problem is leadership. It starts with the CEO and various execs. Their employees are still living in the "growth hacking" and highly academic world (at least their engineers) and their execs are drunken with arrogance, convinced their Titanic will never sink. And they may be partially right, it may not sink but it will never regain its former glory. It will rot on the shelf, besides IBM,AT&T, HP and many more. At its core, alphabet is a services company, it does not sell goods (to the most part). Their board needs to decide if the company should focus on business services or consumer services and replace the executives with people who have experience in that area. The actual quality of GCP is superb in my opinion. They have a flair for architecting excellent solutions. I prefer GCP over any cloud from a purely technical perspective. Their leaders just don't get that it isn't enough. They're not operating a toy or a museum of technical marvels. Actual people need to use it.

underdeserver 2y ago
I worked on GCP, left Google about two years ago. Some Googlers are aware of this, fewer care, and fewer still act on it - you sort of have to be an insane employee* to do that. I saw tickets from high-paying, top-10 customers, go unanswered for days; no one senior enough on the team to answer felt it was more important than the day-to-day, and no one from the support/account executive staff felt they had the authority to demand it. I see it otherwise. I think solving customer support is crucial to GCP's success, and since I agree with you that GCP is the better underlying product, there is a deluge of money passing Google by, just waiting for the right executive team to start caring about this to pick it up. Kind of like Microsoft pre-Satya. * https://yosefk.com/blog/people-can-read-their-managers-mind.html https://yosefk.com/blog/people-can-read-their-managers-mind....
- pm90 2y ago
  This is really sad to read. I agree with you that GCP has the superior product. Azure is a fucking joke. AWS sucks but they do respond to feedback and will even get engineers on a call with you if you hit certain edge cases. The level of apathy you describe will very quickly sour users.