I think the problem here is not only about Google providing support or not. The problem is when they are not providing support, how they make it possible for users to solve problems themselves.
If you are gonna close a user's account, either by human or by a robot, you should notify the user before you do it, so that the user can fix the violation if there's any, or find/migrate to an alternative.
Mailing-lists might not be the worst. I mean if you have a backup list including every members email address, you can email them about switching to an alternative. But imagine your Google Apps free account is closed without any prior notification. You suddenly cannot use your email. You decide that you can't have your email address dead knowing that emails sent to it just sink, so you sign up another custom-domain email provider (or build your own on ec2), and tweak with the configurations, which takes an hour. Then you go to your DNS provider and update MX records. Oops, DNS updates can take several hours even one day to synchronize. That's up to a day that you are worrying about missing important emails.
> If you are gonna close a user's account, either by human or by a robot, you should notify the user before you do it, so that the user can fix the violation if there's any, or find/migrate to an alternative.
Google is not providing support to save costs. If Google implemented warning emails and some sort of compliance check or communication to indicate issues have been addressed, that would add costs as well.
If you are gonna close a user's account, either by human or by a robot, you should notify the user before you do it, so that the user can fix the violation if there's any, or find/migrate to an alternative.
Mailing-lists might not be the worst. I mean if you have a backup list including every members email address, you can email them about switching to an alternative. But imagine your Google Apps free account is closed without any prior notification. You suddenly cannot use your email. You decide that you can't have your email address dead knowing that emails sent to it just sink, so you sign up another custom-domain email provider (or build your own on ec2), and tweak with the configurations, which takes an hour. Then you go to your DNS provider and update MX records. Oops, DNS updates can take several hours even one day to synchronize. That's up to a day that you are worrying about missing important emails.
And it did happen before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4825445