I spent much of the summer of 1982 in Beijing. China was a very different place 30 years ago. Foreigners were rare, foreigners actually working in China for Chinese organizations were rarer still, and I was there to work. I was an editor at China Daily, the English language newspaper created for foreign visitors as a preferred alternative to allowing western publications into the country. The way I got the gig was simple: much of the reporting staff had been students of mine at Stanford the year before.
Once the decision was made to start China Daily, there was a need to find Chinese reporters who could write in English. Whoever was in charge decided it was easier to make English teachers into reporters than to teach Chinese reporters to speak and write English. So a deal was struck with Stanford and the University of Missouri to make reporters out of Chinese English teachers. That was my job.
My Chinese students back in 1981 were older and more motivated than my American students. Many of them had been imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution — banished to the countryside to build in former rice paddies the prisons which they then occupied. English teachers were especially suspect. In addition to working hard at journalism (there appeared to be little or no journalistic tradition in China at the time) my students nearly all got off-the-books jobs in Chinese restaurants and worked hardest of all learning to drive. Returning with a California driver’s license was good for two jumps in pay grade in the China of 1982, where private cars were unknown. The only way to learn to drive in Beijing back then was by joining the Army.
This is all prelude to a story of one student’s experience at the Beijing City Hall on her return. She had a reason to go to the City Hall, some business with the city government. A guard at the door told her she couldn’t enter because her hair was too long. There was a law still on the books from the days of the Cultural Revolution that dictated precisely how long both men’s and women’s hair could be. You remember that look, along with the gray and green Mao jackets. The law was rarely enforced anymore, but this guard was a stickler. He barred her entrance to the building but then offered her a rubber band to hold her hair in a more acceptable manner. If she’d return the rubber band as she left the building the guard would let the woman proceed.
She told me her story that afternoon in the newsroom and I urged her to write about it, which she did, and lo the law was eventually repealed!
Understand this was a long time ago, before Tiananmen Square, and I don’t want to make too big a deal about it. But one person was able to change in a small way the lives of a billion people just by writing a story, which I think is pretty darned amazing.
But it probably wouldn’t have worked at Google.
I have a longtime reader who was banned from Google Groups for reasons he still does not understand. I’ll let him take it from here:
To my knowledge I wasn’t part of any group at the time and certainly hadn’t “abused” any groups. No reason was given for my being banned. My only recourse was to go to this link.
Clicking on “contact” takes you here, where I’m allowed to fill in exactly one thing which is my email address. I can’t give them any details or anything else. Not sure what good that would do anyway since they’ve never given me a reason why I was banned in the first place, so what would I really say?
Now I can’t even visit a Google Groups web page if I’m logged into Google. Of course if I log out of Google I can go there no problem.
Flash forward to the past week or so. Suddenly I’m getting craploads of spam in Arabic that is all getting through because it is coming from Google — Google Groups to be precise. I finally figured out it was Google Groups today and looked at the headers and see this link in them to unsubscribe.
Except guess what? I can’t go to that link because I’m banned from Google Groups!
As far as I can tell, all the “contact us” links on Google go here.
Since my issue doesn’t fall into any of these categories there isn’t any way for me to even contact Google to fix this problem. So now I’m getting 30 emails a day in Arabic with no way to contact Google to make them stop.
Best I can tell, this type of (Catch-22 — though he used a better word) is exactly what happens with Google no matter the product. I can’t see how they ever have any hope of having a product other than search if with the way they handle customer service. I mean in this case they are just brushing me off but it has been the same experience ever time I’ve dealt with them.
I’m also banned from Google Adsense and again I have no idea why. We’ve never done anything that was even marginally questionable much less tried to do anything abusive or illegal. As far as I can tell both bans are for life. Since they won’t tell me why or let me respond to them I’m just stuck.
They wouldn’t even lend him a rubber band.
Hello, #1
I too have tried to contact Google to HELP them, and even that is not possible.
In some respects they are brain dead.
Scott
Change email addresses. It’s good to do that every 5 to 10 years.
Don’t want to do that?
Use an email client that can be trained to recognize junk (in this case, arabic) email. After a week or two, you’ll never see it.
Don’t want to do that?
Live with it, like you would with a chronic disease.
Bottom line: Google’s too big to handle small “personal” problems. China still grinds its citizens to dust if they step far enough out of line.
“Google’s too big to handle small “personal” problems.”
And you honestly condone their attitude? Get out of our society at once! We don’t tolerate antisocial “people” like you!
Are you trying to be sarcastic, ironic or funny? Man…
Don’t Be Evil! (or just be big enough that you can’t be bothered with little people…)
Evil ™ is a proprietary metric of Google, Inc. that is used to measure the percentage of users being whaled on at any particular time. Google manages the Evil ™ level by blowing overcounts of users away. If you have any questions about Evil ™, stick your finger up your (kazoo) and whistle.
I agree with your sentiment. Your practical solution is most reasonable. Sure, I also think Google is being all stupid about this – but hey that’s their right.
The thing which is interesting about Google is that they’ve figured out how to scale everything except customer relationships. If Google simply decided one day that actually dealing with people using other people is actually a smart thing to do and spent time and money figuring out how to do it then they could probably break out of the rut they’ve gotten themselves into.
Right now, in essence Google is a company that owns a certain advertising niche — which does very well for them for the time being — and spends money randomly trying to find new businesses. The highest profile example is Android which, as far as I can tell, has been a giant net loss for them. But the one thing that cripples almost all their ventures is the fact that they not only avoid dealing with the human side of problems, they seem to be actually afraid of it.
Imagine if Google had actually tried to offer real customer service for customers of its Nexus phones, instead of deciding customer service was too hard and giving up on their business model (selling phones without plans direct to users) and simply handing the OS over to companies with the old business model (let carriers handle the people and take most of the profits).
Almost all of Google’s various products, including its successful product, are crippled by Google’s aversely to dealing with people. If they can’t do their customer service via a web app it’s too scary and they avoid it. In the end, they will get their clocks cleaned by someone who does what they do, possibly not quite as well, possibly not quite as cheaply, but provides decent customer service.
“In the end, they will get their clocks cleaned by someone who does what they do, possibly not quite as well, possibly not quite as cheaply, but provides decent customer service.”
I wish, but I’m not holding my breath. Even when they could apply technology to deliver better customer service, they seem reluctant to do it. Companies can develop subtle, pervasive attitudes that are very persistent – However adaptive it is for Search, I’m afraid Google’s “talk to the hand” attitude will be very hard to change, come the day… But that day could be 10 or more years away.
Awesome post Tonio
What are you – “chopped liver?”
Of course, you are! you are not the customer, you are the product. The liver cannot complain how it is served by the chef…
This is great! (And very true) 🙂
Agree to that point as well 😉
I use the google search engine to find the answer to numerous questions. But I don’t ever recall Google Groups even poping up in my search results. I’ve never given them my real email address either. Not even sure what Google Groups is for. If you must use Google for more than search, get your own custom email address independently of Google and create a new Google email address for access to their services only.
Bob tell your friend to send me his Arabic email and I will translate it for him. You never know what nuggets we will find.
Shukraan wa al ham dulilah
Perhaps if they changed their slogan from “don’t be evil” to “don’t be brain dead” . . . .
It helps to remember that you are not Google’s customer — you are Google’s product. The same goes for Facebook as well, of course.
It would help if you didn’t have a contorted sense of reality just like Google’s.
“If you tolerate this then your children will be next!”
Client = the one who pays
Product = what is sold
Google sells ad viewers — the users of search engine, gmail, google groups google docs, etc. If you are not paying Google for something but are using it, then you probably are a viewer of ad, and, therefore, the product.
That’s not commercial madness, that’s just plain facts. If you don’t wish to be the product, don’t be one. No one is forcing you to use it. If you wish, I can even indicate a few providers of such services that will happily accept payment for their services, and treat you as a customer.
Seriously? Implying that Google is worse than the Chinese government? Well, did your friend mysteriously vanish in the night after complaining about Google? Did a tank drive into his living room where he was then wisked away by the Google authorities?
If you want to make a point about Google’s poor customer service that’s one thing. But this kind of hyperbole comparison is beneath you. What next, the classic Hitler comparison?
It appears the point of the story has gone over your head,
Google isn’t “worse” than the PRC ca. 1982, but the bureaucracy of Google is less user friendly than the bureaucracy of the PRC ca. 1982 was.
Oh please, are you really that naive? If the point was to compare Google to a non-friendly bureaucracy, why not compare them to the DMV? Or IBM?
No, the fact is that the name China conjures up a lot more than the image of bureaucracy. Especially the China of the 1980s. And that is why I am so disappointed with the comparison, especially coming from someone of Mr.Cringely’s calibre. This is nothing more than shock journalism. It’s trash. This is the kind of comparison I would expect Michael Moore or Alex Jones to come up with.
Still disagree? Ok, what if the title had been “Yet another way Stalin’s Russia and Google are different”. Or how about, “Yet another way the Auschwitz Deathcamps and Google are different”. With the conclusion being that Auschwitz was better in some way than Google. Would that still be nothing but a comparison of bureaucracies in your mind?
You make me sad
Still, I am very agreeable to “why not compare them to the DMV? Or IBM?” The bottom bit ‘jumps the shark’ somewhat though – but I guess that’s your point – as this article really really does that.
As the guy who actually writes this stuff you are criticizing, I’m a bit confused. I don’t think a comparison with Michael Moore is appropriate here because, as I recall, Michael Moore wasn’t in Beijing in 1982, while I was.
As to whether I’m jumping the shark with my analogy, I think it is important to point out that this isn’t an analogy at all, but a comparison. An analogy typically uses events that didn’t happen but easily could have, like visiting the DMV or dealing with IBM as you suggest, but this is a comparison of actual events, which is very different. And yes, I am absolutely saying that customer support from the Chinese government in Beijing in 1982 was better than customer support is today from Google. Shoot the messenger if you like, but in these very specific — and REAL — examples, China succeeded and Google failed.
regardless of my level naivete`, I was right according to the author. You, on the other hand, need to do a better job of reading what is actually written instead of what you imagine was written between the lines.
I agree with Tkemper. The comparison with China is a bit extreme. Just because Google has no concept of customer service doesn’t merit placing them to the far right of a totalitarian government.
I will say. though, that this article made me think (which is why I read Cringely in the first place). My big aha moment here is to finally see the difference between the Apple philosophy (near cult-like following due largely to its customer service) and the Google philosophy (sorry, we don’t respond to individuals, go search for your the answers). Explains why the world’s honeymoon with Google seems to be ending.
Again, Robert was there in 1982 to experience the “far right of a totalitarian government” you speak of. I’ve lived, and still travel for work to Vietnam, since the early 90s and it never fails to amaze me how people will lecture me with similar, superficial statements about Vietnam who have never even been there.
Isn’t Google Groups just a front end to Usenet?
Google Groups is what became of DejaNews after it went kaput.
Minor correction: Google Groups is what was left after Google bought and wrecked DejaNews.
But the Original Victim’s solution is simple: download a decent newsreader and use USENET instead of bothering with Google Groups. I use Pan for Linux and used to use Forte’s Agent for Windows. Both are much faster and easier to use than the clunky GG web interface and, equally important, both have excellent killfile capabilities.
Agreed. Most web interfaces for mail and newsgroups are a poor substitue for real mail and news clients. Fortunately Microsoft still provides free ones for XP, Vista, and Win7; unfortunately they have discontinued their news servers for help with MS products.
Thunderbird has a news reader, is free and works quite well.
DejaNews was toast and ready for extinction. Google picked up the remains and at least made something out of it.
And while a proper client is the best approach for day-to-day usage, DN’s main benefit was in archiving Usenet and making it easily searchable, something that a local client and the server it relies on are unwieldy for, at best.
Google is good at algorithms. Algorithms cannot handle specific situations. Do you remember the customer service+PR disaster following the first Nexus launch? People do need to ask questins and have one to one assistance at some point. I use google domains, the cheap 10 bucks per year version, and occasionally mail would not go through or the do ain would fall. Look into google groups. Thousands of questions about peoplein this situation – no one answers. They’re not prepared for it.
I’m reminded of a great quote by my friend Glenn Fleishmann: “Google gets algorithms; they don’t get people.”
At Google, algorithms are their ideology and religion, since it was the source of their profits. The problem is that they haven’t figured out how to deal with people problems. If the people would only go away, everything would be wonderful, never mind that the money for their profit actually comes from people.
Same thing happened to me, but with YouTube. Somehow I became banned, never did anything even borderline questionable (only videos posted were educational, never left obscene / racist / hateful comments, etc.)
I followed a link that was supposedly the “if you want to appeal” kind of thing (mind you, they didn’t even tell me why my account was “suspended”). Went through the process, never heard a thing.
Damn you, google. We really are the product.
Who was it that said this is the simplified explanation of googles new data policy
”We are Google. Lower your firewalls and surrender your data.
We will add your content and technological distinctiveness to our own.
Your data will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.”
I contacted google with a specific problem I was having when saving waypoints to custom maps in google maps. I followed some bouncing ball to report the issue, they acknowledged that there was a bug, but couldn’t say how long it would take to fix and about 3 weeks later it was fixed. I was quite surprised because I expected to be ignored.
This is why we can never recommend any google product to be used in a serious business. While their products are (sometimes) very nifty and have a lot of flash and bang (and sometimes even benefit or advantage)… the fact that you have absolutely no recourse whatsoever if (when) you get into any kind of problem with them means you’re business is at risk.
The same could be said of Microsoft.
“The same could be said of Microsoft.”
Only by the grossly misinformed or willfully ignorant. Support from Microsoft is easy to obtain, especially if you pay for it – something that isn’t even an offering with Google.
Wow – I never thought I would be defending Microsoft but here it is… how the mighty are falling…
Actually, since so many people use Microsoft, I don’t have any need to call them. I just Google my problem to find the answer if one exists. E.g. Want to know how to do a clean install with upgrade media? Google “clean install with upgrade media”.
You said “Support from Microsoft is easy to obtain, especially if you pay for it – something that isn’t even an offering with Google.”
Google Apps for Business is a paid service and they do offer telephone support. I know because we migrated three mail domains to GA recently and I’ve open around 10 support cases by phone and followed up after either by email or phone. They have been really fast to respond and had solved nine out of ten. The one not been solved is because of a feature missing.
So, there is no base for your claim. If you pay to Google you get support, as easy as with MS.
Great article Bob!
I’ve got a good friend who has been teaching English in China for quite a few years now.
One way in which China is NOT different that Google is that they spy on him continuously and don’t hide the fact.
His wife even had the cliche’ experience of having her telephone call interrupted so they could “change the tapes”!
I recently realized that analytics software track the users web pointer as you visit a web page… I assume Google Analytics can too.
China’s laws are made and enforced by people. Google’s rules and procedures are made by idealists and enforced by algorithms.
I bought my first Android phone about 18 months ago. I have learned a lot about it in that time. HELLO GOOGLE — There are problems with Android. If you do not find a way to listen to people like me, Android is going to blow up in your face.
The stock market and consumer sentiment are driven by perception and you have an ugly perception waiting to happen. It won’t be long until you have a new competitor in the market. In the market place smart phone loyalty lasts only 2 years, the contract life of the phone. The problems with Android are real and it is only a matter of time until they are exposed. When that happens there will be a slow, but clear exodus to Apple and Microsoft.
Maybe Google bought Motorola not just for the patents or manufacturing ability but also for customer service knowledge?
PayPal, at least in its earliest days, did not listen to users. I had “purchased” a product from a crook who did not deliver. PayPal charged my bank account right away, however. I tried and tried to find a real person at PayPal to talk to and to remove the charges from my account, and for a long time did not succeed. The crook apparently knew this, and stalled me past the 30 “help” period of PayPal. I finally succeeded in getting to a real person, but was told that the 30 days was up and there was no recourse; I lost my money. I did pursue the matter separately, and ultimately found that this person was a known crook. The feds even wrote me and asked if I would testify against him in court, expenses paid. It was inconvenient for me but I later found that he was sent to jail. There’s at least some small compensation for my loss. I have never looked back and never will touch PayPal again, thank you very much!
Whenever I pay with Paypal I go to the trouble of changing the payment method to “credit card”. That way I can reverse the charge through my credit card company. Fortunately, I haven’t had to do that yet so I can’t say for sure what would happen if I did. But I know I’m not the only one routinely changing the payment method.
I never use a “money” service unless I can contact someone by phone first. That is a good idea for business services as well.
I had been a member of Adsense since the beginning (2003), making about $50 per month. Last year Google sent me a message that since i had been abusing my account be clicking on my own ads, I was being excommunicated. The charge was untrue, and when I tried to go to my Adsense dashboard to look at the history, the account was gone. Evil.
Well the difference between google and the PRC of 1982 is there is probably no human in the loop with google. Hence no recourse and no one to lend a rubber band.
Any kind of support for free-on line stuff like this is something I envision three people in a room, drinking soda and eating pizza and getting to their emails between playing worlds of warcraft. Im sure thats how it started, the problem is super crapy customer service is now in their DNA and its going to beed over to their other projects. If part of Apple success is their eco system, Google does not have a snowballs chance in hell of toppling Apple from their dominance in mobile computing unless they can fix this.
Yea.. good luck with that.
I have a similar Google story. I had two email addresses on gmail, one personal and one for business using my domain name. I made a change to the business address/account and all of a sudden I could not log in to either. There was no where to go, no phone number to call, no one to email. I also ended up in captcha hell. I could not read them and even the audio ones were hard. I was lucky that I could changed the MX records for the business account. After a couple of weeks I was able to log in again.
I am not surprised. How do you provide support when you have hundreds of millions of users.
I know GoDaddy has gotten some bad press lately, but I do love their 24/7 tech support.
If you use gmail or any Google apps for anything important have a backup plan because (as someone above said) you have no recouse.
I’m saddened to hear this about google.
The norm these days seems to be that companies don’t
allow one to contact them without some very specific
reason and won’t explain their actions that affect one.
Paypal, USPostal service, nVidia, and AFAICT any company with
a web site does not want to deal with their public
except on very limited terms. Is like privacy?
Do we just have to get over it?
Amazon’s been good. I purchased a tv there last year and had a few issues with order fulfillment. Emailed in first with issue and got call back within an hour. Everything was taken care of very well.
I don’t think this is a problem specific to Google. Any large company or state apparatus where you can only reach a first level support designed to fence off “strange” requests is inherently unable to recognize valid, but singular problems as actually existing.
Algorithmic Google might be especially hard to get an escalation triggered such that people who have the insight and imagination, and also the professional pride to track down a rare bug actually get noticed of the issue. I have two similar issues pending with Apple. The difference is that they try to answer, but when you realize that the very friendly support people calling you back and telling you “we don’t have a process for this” is a nice way to tell that your request can’t be handled at all and won’t have any effect, that’s only a little more helpful than getting no answer at all.
So in fact, I guess the only way to get such issues resolved is when they get published in a way such that the PR department recognizes them as a potential problem on their own radar.
Unfortunatly, no luck for those problems that are rare *and* don’t make a good enough story to get published.
“But it probably wouldn’t have worked at Google.”
Wouldn’t have, or won’t? Of course it won’t, which has me thinking back to prediction #8. I can’t help but feel that Bob has given up on the power of the written word.
And/or Google. Carry on.
“Stop, or we will send the email back to you one character at a time.”
A friend and I would use this threat to raise others’ awareness to the limited quotas on our email accounts. (This was early- to mid- 90s. They were sending 10MB attachments to our 5MB inbox.) It succeeded, because they knew either of us could have this active in an afternoon of coding.
Just substitute Larry’s email address.
While likely satisfying, it would also likely result in you getting banned from Google… Oh, wait. You already are.
Robert, what system does your friend use? 😉
>> Glenn Fleishmann: “Google gets algorithms; they don’t get people.”
So true. In 2005 I spent months trying to find someone to talk to behind the Google Wall so we could GIVE THEM a better elevation model for all of Canada to use in Google Earth and later Google Maps. At that time their terrain model for Canada, especially north of 60 was very poor.
I did eventually get a couple of real email addresses for real people and there followed an exchange or three of how to deliver the data. A usb hard drive was chosen and off it went. To this day we’ve no idea what happened after that. Inquiries as to what happened, did you look at it, did you decide it didn’t fit, or…, or… went unanswered.
This year, in late 2011 and early 2012, the elevation terrain for northern Canada in Google spatial products has finally been improved to be relatively close to what we gave them 6 years ago.
This was my MOST SUCCESSFUL (attempted) interaction with Google Corp. Other attempts ranging from trying to submit bug reports to simple queries about problems with their services (google apps for domains) have been even more ignored.
I completely understand and support an organization’s right to use or not use data and services as they see fit for their own purposes. However their near complete disdain, one might even say aggressive dismissal of, real communication outside their own world is not cool. One might even say evil. It certainly feels close to that on this end.
Wow. The comments here are interesting. I got the war of customer service straight away. The fact that China had other (and arguably more totalitarian) issues was not the point. How to navigate a large consumer unfriendly giant was. Maybe I am just too shallow and didn’t think about reading between the lines to find a story that does not exist?
Google lost the “Do no evil” moniker a long time ago.
Good stuff as always Bob.
Good point above that we searchers are part of Google’s product while advertisers are its customers.
For my searching, my browser home page is https://www.ask.com . I admit Google is more powerful, but both give the same top results 95% of the time. When I do need Google, it’s not hard to find…
Ask is based upon the Vivísimo clustering technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University. Vivísimo was the best search engine I ever used. In addition to the usual linear thread of results, it would also offer subcategories. Often I would realize, “Oh, that’s what I really was looking for.”
Ask’s use of clustering is piss-poor, unfortunately. Also unfortunately, I haven’t found another good site similar to Vivísimo. Vivísimo became Clusty, which was then sold and turned into Yippy. Yippy has good clustering but horrendous censorship, alas, being church and family friendly.
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clusty
My brother and a friend had a similarly bizarre experience, although this time involving Gmail.
Our mutual friend is a Tai Chi aficionado, and we were at the time viewing various YouTube videos about out-of-the-way martial arts techniques and styles.
They happened upon a video on a martial art demonstration of a style called mu (as in the Greek letter), and was supposedly a way of using “Dark Energy” to wreak havoc, etc.
They each saw the video, and my friend emailed the link to my brother from his computer, so they’d each have it stored. When my brother tried to show me a day or so later, the entire email chain containing the link was gone from his Gmail, and when we searched YouTube, the video could no longer be found anywhere.
Similarly, when we asked our friend to check his Gmail account, his copy of the conversation was gone as well.
It sounds impossible and bizarre, but this did indeed happen. We never found the video again. I now use iCloud mail (which in the long run might turn out no better…).
Isn’t that how it goes when a political or religious or politically religious society gone awry?
I’m right. You’re wrong. There is no reason to discuss it.
China. KSA. USA.
Speaking of 1982….
Back in 1982 I was involved in the bulletin board BBS scene we had back then, with our 300 baud modems we would call each other’s computers and log into our accounts we had set up and read some postings, send private messages or contribute to public discussions; well it was quite a bit like this very comment system actually.
Back then it was very exciting to connect one computer system with another computer system and communicate electronically. But somebody had to provide the message retention system, and it was no small investment in hardware and software (and power, and dedicated telephone line), and often times that BBS software was custom written by the “Sysop” himself or herself.
Anyway, because people had a lot of investment they felt a deep sense of moral outrage if it wasn’t used as they had intended; and there were many flame wars and ban wars and ultimately all decisions were up to the judgment of the Sysop. After all, that was the person who owned and provided the public space that (theoretically) “anybody” was allowed to join.
My funny story was, I had logged onto somebody’s BBS and it had crashed or something, had some kind of problem, and was taking a long time to process the log-off command. So after a minute or so I just commanded my modem to hang up the line (ATH = attention modem: hangup). Well the Sysop logged that event and issued me a warning. So when I called back the next day and read the warning, I responded back with something like “what’s the big deal?” to which I got an even more threatening warning. This escalated until finally the Sysop admitted to me that it wouldn’t crash his software if the line was dropped, he just found it disrespectful for anybody’s computer to hang up on his computer!!
That made me smile. And yes, I was banned for life. But I suspect I have outlived that BBS service…
Google has no sense of customer service. I manage Google Places for a small business with two unique business lines, two unique websites, sharing 1 physical address. Google Places will only report web traffic based on the physical address, ignoring the websites. (this is a real business, with 80 employees, $9M in annual sales). And it chooses to do this using an alpha sort. It is coding logic error that is so bad it is almost comical.
Yet every month, someone new from Google calls me to sell me advertising based on the quality of their Places and Places reporting on my website. And when I tell them about that experience, the answer is always a)Places is free b)that is another division of Google c)the quality of our analytics makes the advertising so valuable.
And their internal CRM usage is lousy too, since a new agent never has record of the prior call.
“…Yet every month, someone new from Google calls me…” I guess that proves that people really do work there. Either that or you are being called by other customers who are given an algorithmic incentive to sell you stuff. Coming to think of it, it’s probably the latter.
[…] I, Cringely » Yet another way China and Google are different – Google inflexibility compared to US stereotypes about China […]
Is anyone from Google reading this? Your are getting some very good feedback. You would be wise to listen, learn, and act!
You might find this experience and commentary of some interest… http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/gmail-hell-day-4-dealing-with-the-borg-or-being-evil-without-really-thinking-about-it/
Mike
Robert, please have the affected person contact me, I may be able to at least find out the reason for the account being disabled.
Want Google to help? No problem. Join the Google Apps for Business and pay monthly fee. Their support will gladly help you.
Actually our little consulting business has found a great way to get rid of any spam problems – we just use .me or Apple email. Spam has for the most part gone away and with the odd one, if they keep coming for a couple days, the system seems to learn and then no more problem. It’s working great!
It alone makes it worth the price to us.
My ISP provides server side spam filtering. I understand that gmail and hotmail also provide it for free.
I don’t know about anybody elese, but Google scares me a LOT more than China –
Just sayin’….
And people wonder why I will never let my organization go with Google Apps.
Well, I haven’t had an issue with Google products, but I am a relatively light user of them. (My N1 phone works fantastically – even after it got a rice bath due to falling in the tub with my son a few months ago.)
That said, I don’t think it is at all limited to Google. Ever try to get support from Yahoo!? Years ago when they first moved their POP3/SMTP access to only the paid accounts, I tried to convert my free account to a paid account; but their wallet wouldn’t take my card. No reasons were given, etc; and I couldn’t find any way to get ahold of them in a manner that would actually work. Eventually it worked for some reason – but it was well over a year after the fact.
I’ve had a number of other experiences with Yahoo! too that have been very similar; often if I do get support going round in circles for a while until they finally understand the problem (usually at least 3 or 4 emails). It’s a wonder they’re still in business.
[…] Yet Another Way China and Google are Different – Don’t be evil. Please. […]
Google is evil; they snoop and spy on everything their users do. I use none of their products except YouTube. I could care less if they went bankrupt tomorrow.
For search engines, try:
https://www.ask.com (with AskEraser enabled)
https://ixquick.com
http://duckduckgo.com
This is highly informatics, crisp and clear. I think that Everything has been described in systematic manner so that reader could get maximum.
That “students of mine at Stanford” stuff still has a creepy ring to it.
Your longtime reader was using a free service. I’ve been a paid AdWords advertiser since they began over ten years ago, paying over several hundred dollars a month.
It was only during this year that discovered I could actually contact a human being at Google. Of course, the perons I contact are of no little or no help at all.
Now of course, almost every business is entirely dependent on Google and, regardless of our industry expertise or experience, must not only pay Google for advertising, but SEO experts to help us compete against others who may have less expertise and experience, but pay Google more and game results with SEO.
Google may not be evil, but they have become the Borg for small business owners.
My take away: China is a strange place, bob worked there for a few months 30 years ago, google has customer support issues.
As well as paid support, Microsoft do have their ( free online searchable ) knowledge base which will even tell you about problems and limitations with their own products ( as do some other tech companies). Apple seem to rely on forums with users helping users, at least for IOS, the same as you get with the open source Linux distros. Amazon are the ones that have apparently mastered customer service at a distance. Mind you I’m clearly their customer not their product.
My best friend had a similar experience with her Google Profile. She started one under the account she uses as character developer for a book series of ours. In short order, her profile was blocked with some stupid reason I don’t remember. She edited the profile repeatedly to accommodate Google and resubmitted over and over for months. She finally gave up and it is still blocked after several years.
However, she can use anything Google under other accounts!
On my end, I was using Google’s monetizing programs on my various Blogspot blogs, until I got 3,000 hits in one day. No revenue, because that was the day Google decided to replace sponsored ads with their own because an Onion article linked to years earlier was “discovered” to be “sexual in nature.” (not the post that got 3,000 hits either) I am no longer a customer of their ads.
Google didn’t get rich by blowing money on customer service! That $h!t expensive.
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