The response to this situation is the thing I take most offense with.
Google has too long operated on this notion - one we were exposed to in Fight Club, and horrified by - that reaction is an equation of cost. If they're nobody, fuck them. If they trumpet their displeasure on a blog, and no one cares? Fuck them. Oh -- people noticed? It hit an aggregator? Fix the problem promptly. They are now defused.
It's economical, reasonable even, but golly, it sure is /evil/.
It used to surprise us! It used to be that that would be the intriguing twist - "Google contacted them shortly afterward and fixed it! How quaint! We love google!" - but no more. Now it becomes clear that this is simply their practice. If you're being too loud about the shitty time you've had at Google they silence you. You either report that "there's nothing wrong now", or you're hiding information and being a bad netizen.
In this particular case, the user brought up an issue with their lack of communication or a face to deal with. Google responded by fixing an account without establishing any communication or providing an explanation. Notice the incongruity between response and complaint, and see how ineffective it is this time.
What happens when the failures are too common for people to take notice? When Google making a big mistake is just regular, shitty life, and no one cares enough to post it on an aggregator? No one's problems will be fixed, then.
Google's tipping point in public favour has arrived - they are evil. Blogs have questioned when it would hit for a long time, and I think it's safe to suppose the inevitable backlash has begun. I'm planning to move to a private mail server where there's some shred of accountability as soon as I can. And I swear, I used to absolutely love Google.
Well put. Observe that Google is treating customer complaints not as a customer support issue, but as a PR issue. When the PR goal is met (people are happy or unhappy in silence) the problem is solved.
How do you know? What if, according to Google, the problem was the customer? How do you tell a publisher that their website is not appealing to advertisers such that the publisher will satisfied? Isn't that implicit in the account cancellation? So why say it again explicitly?
I don't understand what Google could do differently to handle these incidents other than staff handlers to parrot empty reassurances to angry customers.
They could send an automatically generated mail saying:
We had to suspend your account because you violated rule X (link to description). To have your account reinstated please do Y or Z so you are not in violation of X.
"Why was my account disabled? Can you tell me more about the invalid click activity you detected?
Because we have a need to protect our proprietary detection system, we're unable to provide our publishers with any information about their account activity, including any web pages, users, or third-party services that may have been involved. "
So, you may submit more information to Google, but Google will not submit any more information to you. Thus, there is no need to entertain a discussion regarding your account ---at the expense of both parties--- as Google will not submit any further information to you.
It's not evil to fix a machine when its users publish that the machine not working as expected.
It's not evil to refuse a human conversation regarding that machine.
You want reasons? What, some phone operator is going to be able to know the specifics of your exact circumstance and the entire Google system at a moment's notice and produce for you an actionable response? For all people in the world? For free?
You would prefer hold music and a canned response?
I'd prefer if Google fixed the problem as fast as possible. I prefer if that process didn't require my input, and Google probably doesn't need your input to fix their machines anyways.
I agree with your overarching point here, that a broken machine or account shouldn't need to have the customer call or email a support line to get it fixed, and that customer support tends to suck -- especially any sort of support we would expect for 'free'.
However, we are not straddling a line between "customer has to file a complaint to get things fixed" and "things are fixed automatically", where the superior option is automatic fixes and no customer involvement. We are between "customer has the ability to file a complaint, because things don't get fixed on their own" and "customer is forced to call a great deal of public attention to themselves in order to get Google to notice or care, and hopefully fix things", where the superior option (in my mind) is the ability to file a formal complaint which actually gets a response.
Particularly in a case like this, where there is no machine failure or error, but instead a calculated judgement to terminate a user's account with no clear reasoning provided, just some vague "risk" they present to advertisers, I feel that some accountability needs to be had.
Most egregiously, this case raises a serious question of Conflict of Interest. By pulling advertising to an open source project which 'competes' with some of Google's (and their affiliates'/advertisers') products, and being absolutely opaque about their reasoning, Google risks coming off as anticompetitive and ruthless - running some of the little guys out of town by cutting off a funding source. If that was at all part of their motive or reasoning, it absolutely was 'evil'.
If they would just provide clear reasoning, a reasonable degree of transparency, and some form of complaint system where you at least have a chance of hearing back, a lot of negative sentiment wouldn't be coming their way. It's clear that the PR/damage control response isn't carrying the same sway it used to, and also that it was never a special interaction, just visible end users being quieted down to save face.
Apparently, Google has decided that its formal complaint system is "the Internet". We should all abide by Google's wishes and, as long as no internal complaint system appears, use the Internet as our complaint system, calling public attention to such problems so that Google will notice and do something about it.
If that happens enough, and each such complaint contains some reference to the fact that it only appeared on the Internet where Google can see it because Google doesn't provide a more satisfactory, direct line of communication, I suspect Google will eventually rectify that little oversight.
How do you know that the problem was fixed when you don't know what the problem actually was? Maybe they just fixed the symptoms of the problem regarding this indivudual account.
And this is not about human conversation. Someone or some system made the decision to terminate the account. That same decision maker, human or not, knew why the decision was made. To tell the account owner should be a completely automatic procedure, not requiring any human intervention beyond what may have taken place already.
It's not about efficiency. It's not about customer service. This is about secrecy and legal issues. They have decided NOT to tell people why their account is terminated because they don't want to make their rules public. All the talk about the cost of customer service in cases like this is complete BS.
( ) Their uneasy relationship with a country's government
(x) You just realized they control all your data
( ) You just realized they control all your business
(x) You just realized they have terrible customer support
( ) They're innovating too slowly
( ) They're innovating too quickly
Your response is:
( ) Grudgingly accept it, writing about it
(x) Grudgingly quit, writing about it
( ) Litigation, writing about it
This will fail because:
( ) You don't really want to accept it
(x) You don't really want to quit
(x) They control all your data
( ) They control all your business
Until recently, when I bought used books from Alibris, I payed with Google Checkout. Then I found something peculiar, it appeared as if Google charged my CC twice per transaction ('). I went to my Google account, searched around, and found no way to contact Google and ask them what's up. I immediately remembered the stories about people having their accounts killed and not being able to contact Google and get a meaningful answer, because it is their policy not to waste resources on customer support. Google even went to court to defend its practice.
Anyway, I now avoid Google Checkout whenever possible as it's too much of a black box.
(') Alibris customer support told me they aren't actually charging twice the money, the first is a "virtual transaction" that makes sure I have the appropriate funds.
Credit cards have long worked on a "authorize first, transact when all information is presented" scheme. (Quick - think of an alternative that addresses fraud.) The only thing that's new is that you can see it, and that has nothing to do with Google.
I found the same thing. My google-apps account was overcharged ~200$, nothing much, but finding a contact button was next to impossible. Lucky I have some google-fu!
I sent an email about a month ago now, still no reply - it's quite shocking really!
We have an app for sale on the Android Market (which uses Google Checkout for transaction processing), and it seems like every week we have a support email claiming we charged them twice.
We always apologize (even though it's not our fault), explain how the authorization charge works, assure them it'll be gone in a day, and point them to Google's help (bottom of): http://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...
I do wonder why it's done that way on Checkout and not other payment systems, or why it seems more noticeable there; it seems to cause an awful lot of confusion.
I'll tell you why: Google Checkout is doing the same PCI kludge that we do at Dawdle. We only do the $1 authorization charges, and we get people screaming at us all the time. Users hate being "charged" for stuff that they didn't purchase, and lots of people check their stuff online frequently.
But it turns out that you can't be PCI compliant if you store credit cards in distributed virtual servers (it violates the physical access tenet), so they can't store CCs. So you have to do an auth and then a reference transaction off of the auth.
This might be an artifact of the way your cc company presents the transactions. BofA shows me a list of "pending" transactions and then the transactions that have actually posted.
Using gmail only as a convenient web interface for email addresses belonging to a domain you own and control, and backing it up elsewhere is a sensible step for any geek.
Similar applies to any of their other systems that you put anything valuable into. And not just Google, Twitter etc. too.
Google's lack of customer support baffles me - how can anyone do business with them and take them seriously? Obviously, people do - and it is a mystery to me - myself included.
What I find even more shocking is that they got response and re instantiation of account after news hit the reddit. Why double standards then? Why not uphold the wall of silence once the shit hit the fan? It is unprofessional and cowardly.
Google really needs to work on it's transparency towards business clientele - this is their "major weak point for massive damage". I can't remember exactly, but I remember that sometime in the past microsoft tried to implement adwords/adsense platform... I don't know where/why it stopped.
> how can anyone do business with them and take them seriously?
I agree they could do a much better job, but business customers do get support. At one point we were paying for maps, and we had a rep and a phone number to call, etc.
This isn't lack of customer service. It's secrecy. When they shut down someone's service they know why and they could automatically include that information in the notification email.
This leads me to a question that's nagged me, so I'll pose it here.
I am becoming more and more dependent upon google services. Picasa, Gmail, and Docs are my top 3.
I've recently started doing Adwords/Adsense stuff. Both of these pose the risk of "getting in trouble". Google could decide my Adsense clicks are fraudulent, or my Adwords sites are "dangerous to advertisers".
My question. I assume that if Google has a problem with you on any of their services, they block you from all of their services. Your account is suspended "across the board", since it's really just one account.
Is this true? Should I segregate my Adwords/Adsense from the rest of my Google activities into different accounts?
Maybe I'm being naive here, but why are you quitting Gmail, when the problem is clearly with Adsense. I understand that you are furious at Google, and from what you've said you have every right to be; But why stop at Gmail, why not quit Google Search as well :).
I hope Google gets back to you with a more reasonable explaination.
Hosting your email on a server you don't control requires a high degree of trust. What if you were locked out of your Gmail account and couldn't get any support from Google to fix it?
The author had previously been able to dismiss such concerns due to his overall positive experience with Google. After experiencing this first hand proof that Google's support cannot be relied on, he no longer felt secure hosting his critical data with Google.
Google search is different because there is no lock in.
I'd say because Google is clearly not interested in customer service. If they were, you'd not see all the stories of people unable to contact them to resolve issues with so many of their services.
So, why trust them with something as important as your email when they fail at other things?
Personally, I use a gmail account for non-important communication, and my primary remains a Yahoo account. I've never had a problem contacting a live person with any Yahoo service, or getting back a response that actually shows they read what I wrote.
Customer service is an area where Google could learn from yahoo, but I doubt they care to implement such an infrastructure.
I'd say Google is more interested in customer service where you pay them (AdWords) than where they pay you (AdSense) or where they give you stuff for free (Gmail, everything else).
Not really, in my experience. I sell educational software, but sometimes my ad gets flagged as a "term page writing service" or something or other (not real clear). Getting it cleared past the flag has taken over a week on occasion, and there is nothing that can help.
And the term-pages sales guys get their ads through anyway!
The only trouble with that is that if they piss off too many of the people who they pay or who use their free services, then they won't have anyone willing to pay them; isn't that a variation of what's happening to the newspapers?
I recently had a similar problem with Google and my AdWords account. My quality score fell from an 8 to a 0 with no explanation and no way to correct the situation.
If Google decides not to let you play in their network you're just out of luck. It's worse than the Apple App Store process.
If only gmail weren't that good. I'm not too excited about the way composing emails works, but the organizing features are pretty great. It's been a while since I looked, but other webmail providers just couldn't compete. For some kind of reason, they're trying to reinvent Outlook with AJAX -- not a new idea, if I remember the history of the 'X' part correctly.
I'd even be interested in a good OSS package for hosting your own service, but there, too, I haven't seen anything approaching gmails usability.
If I were looking for a access-mail-anywhere solution, it looks like I would have to switch back to GNUS and get an Emacs 23 server somewhere...
Perhaps ironically, I agree that Microsoft had some good keyboards and pointing devices -- but that was about ten years ago. Since then, they've trended downward in quality. I'm not so impressed in even the mice and keyboards these days.
Since we don't know what questions they asked Google -- all we know is some of the response -- I'm hesitant to just go with the assumption that Google refuses to answer the posed questions.
The heavy, cream-colored two-button serial mice were the best on the market at the time, and the Sidewinder Pro was a very nice joystick. The mice they sell today are simply ordinary, and no keyboard of theirs has ever held a candle to the old IBMs or the current DAS keyboards (among others).
On the other hand, Windows 7 is the first Microsoft OS since 3.11 that I can use for a full day without doing unhealthy things to my blood pressure.
My all-time favorite pointing device was an optical trackball from Microsoft (I forget the model name). I haven't found one of those since the last I had one was stolen (yes, really) back in 2003ish.
The IBM Model M [1] (and certain imitators), the Das Keyboard [2], the HP Wireless Elite [3], and even the keyboards on Thinkpads [4] are among my all-time top-five favorite keyboards. The original run of Microsoft Natural keyboards [5] (back before they became bulbous "multimedia" train wrecks of UI design [6][7]) were a very distant fifth place, though.
I don't have a photo, but there was a version of the natural keyboard earlier on that didn't screw up the block of keys above the arrows. I had one of those, saw the new ones, and thought to myself: "They're embracing and extending the keyboard now, nothing is sacred."
Thanks for that link, I searched for something like that a while back and didn't find it.
But I worry about cloud-to-cloud backup services like this. If a major email provider goes down, all of its users will be trying to retrieve their backups at the same time. What are the chances the backup service will actually be able to handle this traffic? It's like a run on a bank.
I can understand Google's reasoning. I doubt people browsing the Arch Linux website are going to click on the ads. Google probably pays Arch Linux per impression, so Google and the advertiser are losing money. And what's Google to do, tell you that your users are just too smart to click on any ads? They pretty much did:
while going through our records recently,
we found that your AdSense account has posed a
significant risk to our AdWords advertisers.
I have to admit, after that court case awhile back where it turned out the "wronged party" was abusing the Hell out of the terms of service, I'm deeply skeptical of anyone who claims Google yanked their account for "no reason".
Naturally, though, the blog poster has no way to prove he did everything by-the-book. And the account was reinstated. So it's a sticky matter.
I understand your team loyalty. But if this isn't Kafka-esque, what is?
This is at least the third one of these I've seen on HN. Always the same story. Josef K. gets accused by google of bad behavior but he has no idea why and can't get anyone at google to tell him.
Update: This post unexpectedly hit Reddit, and within a few hours, Aaron got another e-mail telling us that our Adsense account had been reinstated.
Ah, the "significant risk to AdWords advertisers" must have suddenly ceased to exist then! Or perhaps the risk is just preferable to the risk this article caused to Google.
Google has too long operated on this notion - one we were exposed to in Fight Club, and horrified by - that reaction is an equation of cost. If they're nobody, fuck them. If they trumpet their displeasure on a blog, and no one cares? Fuck them. Oh -- people noticed? It hit an aggregator? Fix the problem promptly. They are now defused.
It's economical, reasonable even, but golly, it sure is /evil/.
It used to surprise us! It used to be that that would be the intriguing twist - "Google contacted them shortly afterward and fixed it! How quaint! We love google!" - but no more. Now it becomes clear that this is simply their practice. If you're being too loud about the shitty time you've had at Google they silence you. You either report that "there's nothing wrong now", or you're hiding information and being a bad netizen.
In this particular case, the user brought up an issue with their lack of communication or a face to deal with. Google responded by fixing an account without establishing any communication or providing an explanation. Notice the incongruity between response and complaint, and see how ineffective it is this time.
What happens when the failures are too common for people to take notice? When Google making a big mistake is just regular, shitty life, and no one cares enough to post it on an aggregator? No one's problems will be fixed, then.
Google's tipping point in public favour has arrived - they are evil. Blogs have questioned when it would hit for a long time, and I think it's safe to suppose the inevitable backlash has begun. I'm planning to move to a private mail server where there's some shred of accountability as soon as I can. And I swear, I used to absolutely love Google.