8 ms·

What support? There is no support at Google and this is by design. If they had support it would not be possible to offer what Google offers. You are shut down b

by atirip 14y ago

What support? There is no support at Google and this is by design. If they had support it would not be possible to offer what Google offers. You are shut down by robot and that decision is final. There is no support. And robots do not tell what you did wrong because this would be knowledge on how to play robots. I seriously wonder how long such a begging - please Google, good Google - will finally end.

zoul 14y ago
He’s willing to pay for the support. Just as most people in similar positions. Doesn’t that change the feasibility?
- reuven 14y ago
  No, probably not. Think of how much Google earns per employee. Now think of how much they would earn per support employee. The numbers are probably not even even the same order of magnitude. Moreover, Google makes money from each mailing list (for example) by displaying ads. The revenue that they bring in from each list is pretty small; the key to their income is the huge number of lists that they support. So losing even 100 lists every week, I have to imagine, wouldn't put much of a dent in their income. By contrast, the overhead and cost associated with hiring, training, paying (salary + benefits), and supporting an employee are pretty high, particularly when you're offering a commodity product competing with other commodity (and free) products. From a user's perspective, it seems insane for Google to ignore the business opportunity associated with support. But I have to believe that they've run the math, and that ticking off a number of their customers is cheaper than charging them for decent support.
  - blablabla123 14y ago
    I doubt that they ever did the math in the sense of estimating the numbers on a piece of paper. Service number for 10 cents a minute * 60 minutes = 6$ an hour. (My old mobile operator charged 15 eurocents per minute!) There is hardly an excuse for no support. Even less considering that these numbers do not include happy non-tech customers.
  - evolve2k 14y ago
    If you can't afford to support it you can't afford to run it.
    - spellboots 14y ago
      I don't think this is true, Google seem to be doing pretty well financially, as do plenty of other companies with terrible support.
    - reuven 14y ago
      I'm not saying that this is a desirable situation for users. But I also think it's clear that Google has made a calculated decision -- they want to offer their products for free to as many people as possible, and then avoid supporting them. I would think that the lesson here isn't that Google should be supporting its products, but rather that people should think twice before using unsupported, free products. I believe that it was Henry Luce, the founder of Time magazine, who said that if you aren't paying for a product, then you're the product. And indeed, that's what we see with Google: They give away their products in order to sell your eyeballs to advertisers. This doesn't make them an evil company (although perhaps other things do). They have a legitimate business model that seems to work for many people. Complaining that Google isn't willing to offer support, free or paid, is an indication that your interests and Google's aren't aligned. They're not about to change, so perhaps you shouldn't run your service on their system.
    - tomkarlo 14y ago
      Support is not a boolean atribute. There is a broad range of support intensity from user forums up to in person, on site support. Different services have different levels of appropriate support and the service provider has to decide what level makes sense - and customers have to decide what they need. (Which I admit can be hard to predict.) There was never any promise of strong individual support for this service.
    - PeterisP 14y ago
      For many products and services the support would be far more expensive than providing the "main" service. There is a LOT of well deserved space for stuff provided "as-is", with an explicit refusal to do any support at all, but still very useful for the 'customer'. For example, large part of free software.
  - nicothieb 14y ago
    Not willing to license that business opportunity to smaller/outsourced companies is regretful.
- Maro 14y ago
  It doesn't necessarily. It's simple to think up of economic models where, just because some people are willing to pay for something, doesn't mean it makes sense for someone to sell it. In this case, it clearly does not. This type of (completely understandable) bitching has been going on for years, and Google is not changing a thing.
  - ry0ohki 14y ago
    A good example being the old Google Answers. It was amazing, and it worked by people paying for every answer, but it was shutdown.
- MichaelApproved 14y ago
  He's only willing to pay for support when something goes wrong. That does not cover the cost of providing support. It must cover its costs with subscribing members who pay for service even when they don't immediately need it. Its like healthcare. The system doesn't work if you don't pay when you're healthy and only decide to get coverage when you're sick.
  - Radim 14y ago
    Its like healthcare. The system doesn't work if you don't pay when you're healthy and only decide to get coverage when you're sick. On the contrary, it works pretty well, in many countries across the globe. You probably mean some kind of health insurance. In many countries, this insurance is actually a government tax, so you cannot opt out. So the parallel here would be a mandatory "Google Support Tax" :-)
    - Kurtz79 14y ago
      It's called Google AdWords.
- HNLogInShit 14y ago
  If so, why depend on an bunch of assholes like Google or Facebook? Get a proper server and manage it yourself. And you're ripping yourself off if you regard services from Google or Facebook as free. They're mining every piece of content and every message you send on their services, so they're making money off of you. You're helping them, so putting up with this kind of bullshit is selling yourself short.
- PeterisP 14y ago
  It may be that paid support would be profitable, but still google shouldn't do it. They've openly expressed that their strategy will be only on businesses/products with large ($1B+?) potential, to ensure focus; and killed a number of semi-popular, profitable but "too small" products. Would paid support for the free stuff even be a rounding error's (on google scale) worth of revenue, much less profit?
ximeng 14y ago
At the moment their only feedback mechanism is social media / back door complaints and people leaving their services. This seems suboptimal.
- jrajav 14y ago
  That depends on what you're optimizing for.
rplnt 14y ago
They do have support. For example http://contact.googleapps.com/?&rd=1 http://contact.googleapps.com/?&rd=1
- ceejayoz 14y ago
  For paying Google Apps customers. There's no paid level of service for a non-Apps Google Group.
  - rplnt 14y ago
    Yes, that is true. And I believe they don't have (proper) support even for some paid services, such as App Engine or AdWords. But I was mainly replying to "There is no support at Google".
    - davidp 14y ago
      App Engine has support. We've found them to be helpful so far. https://cloud.google.com/support/packages https://cloud.google.com/support/packages

by atirip 14y ago

zoul 14y ago

He’s willing to pay for the support. Just as most people in similar positions. Doesn’t that change the feasibility?

reuven 14y ago
No, probably not. Think of how much Google earns per employee. Now think of how much they would earn per support employee. The numbers are probably not even even the same order of magnitude. Moreover, Google makes money from each mailing list (for example) by displaying ads. The revenue that they bring in from each list is pretty small; the key to their income is the huge number of lists that they support. So losing even 100 lists every week, I have to imagine, wouldn't put much of a dent in their income. By contrast, the overhead and cost associated with hiring, training, paying (salary + benefits), and supporting an employee are pretty high, particularly when you're offering a commodity product competing with other commodity (and free) products. From a user's perspective, it seems insane for Google to ignore the business opportunity associated with support. But I have to believe that they've run the math, and that ticking off a number of their customers is cheaper than charging them for decent support.
- blablabla123 14y ago
  I doubt that they ever did the math in the sense of estimating the numbers on a piece of paper. Service number for 10 cents a minute * 60 minutes = 6$ an hour. (My old mobile operator charged 15 eurocents per minute!) There is hardly an excuse for no support. Even less considering that these numbers do not include happy non-tech customers.
- evolve2k 14y ago
  If you can't afford to support it you can't afford to run it.
  - spellboots 14y ago
    I don't think this is true, Google seem to be doing pretty well financially, as do plenty of other companies with terrible support.
  - reuven 14y ago
    I'm not saying that this is a desirable situation for users. But I also think it's clear that Google has made a calculated decision -- they want to offer their products for free to as many people as possible, and then avoid supporting them. I would think that the lesson here isn't that Google should be supporting its products, but rather that people should think twice before using unsupported, free products. I believe that it was Henry Luce, the founder of Time magazine, who said that if you aren't paying for a product, then you're the product. And indeed, that's what we see with Google: They give away their products in order to sell your eyeballs to advertisers. This doesn't make them an evil company (although perhaps other things do). They have a legitimate business model that seems to work for many people. Complaining that Google isn't willing to offer support, free or paid, is an indication that your interests and Google's aren't aligned. They're not about to change, so perhaps you shouldn't run your service on their system.
  - tomkarlo 14y ago
    Support is not a boolean atribute. There is a broad range of support intensity from user forums up to in person, on site support. Different services have different levels of appropriate support and the service provider has to decide what level makes sense - and customers have to decide what they need. (Which I admit can be hard to predict.) There was never any promise of strong individual support for this service.
  - PeterisP 14y ago
    For many products and services the support would be far more expensive than providing the "main" service. There is a LOT of well deserved space for stuff provided "as-is", with an explicit refusal to do any support at all, but still very useful for the 'customer'. For example, large part of free software.
- nicothieb 14y ago
  Not willing to license that business opportunity to smaller/outsourced companies is regretful.
Maro 14y ago
It doesn't necessarily. It's simple to think up of economic models where, just because some people are willing to pay for something, doesn't mean it makes sense for someone to sell it. In this case, it clearly does not. This type of (completely understandable) bitching has been going on for years, and Google is not changing a thing.
- ry0ohki 14y ago
  A good example being the old Google Answers. It was amazing, and it worked by people paying for every answer, but it was shutdown.
MichaelApproved 14y ago
He's only willing to pay for support when something goes wrong. That does not cover the cost of providing support. It must cover its costs with subscribing members who pay for service even when they don't immediately need it. Its like healthcare. The system doesn't work if you don't pay when you're healthy and only decide to get coverage when you're sick.
- Radim 14y ago
  Its like healthcare. The system doesn't work if you don't pay when you're healthy and only decide to get coverage when you're sick. On the contrary, it works pretty well, in many countries across the globe. You probably mean some kind of health insurance. In many countries, this insurance is actually a government tax, so you cannot opt out. So the parallel here would be a mandatory "Google Support Tax" :-)
  - Kurtz79 14y ago
    It's called Google AdWords.
HNLogInShit 14y ago
If so, why depend on an bunch of assholes like Google or Facebook? Get a proper server and manage it yourself. And you're ripping yourself off if you regard services from Google or Facebook as free. They're mining every piece of content and every message you send on their services, so they're making money off of you. You're helping them, so putting up with this kind of bullshit is selling yourself short.
PeterisP 14y ago
It may be that paid support would be profitable, but still google shouldn't do it. They've openly expressed that their strategy will be only on businesses/products with large ($1B+?) potential, to ensure focus; and killed a number of semi-popular, profitable but "too small" products. Would paid support for the free stuff even be a rounding error's (on google scale) worth of revenue, much less profit?

ximeng 14y ago

At the moment their only feedback mechanism is social media / back door complaints and people leaving their services. This seems suboptimal.

jrajav 14y ago
That depends on what you're optimizing for.

rplnt 14y ago

They do have support. For example http://contact.googleapps.com/?&rd=1 http://contact.googleapps.com/?&rd=1

ceejayoz 14y ago
For paying Google Apps customers. There's no paid level of service for a non-Apps Google Group.
- rplnt 14y ago
  Yes, that is true. And I believe they don't have (proper) support even for some paid services, such as App Engine or AdWords. But I was mainly replying to "There is no support at Google".
  - davidp 14y ago
    App Engine has support. We've found them to be helpful so far. https://cloud.google.com/support/packages https://cloud.google.com/support/packages