A happy ending would have been calling their support number and getting it fixed through a normal process. Needing to get to the front page of HN first is just ridiculous.
An Internet company, one of the top 3 in the world, that needs to feel threatened that customers are going to rant on Twitter or other internet websites.
Without any other information outside of reading this article, this contradicts basically every other google support story I've ever read on HN. Similar to what the few other comments are saying at the time of me writing this, it seems like this guy made a fuss somewhere that caught the attention of someone who didn't want the bad PR. Google will remain the contact-less customer non-service entity it always has. This guy might have gotten lucky to get a response, but don't expect it to become the norm.
The difference this time is that Google's mistake here didn't just hit one person, or a few people spuriously over a few years, but rather hit a whole class of users all at once. Once a corporation finds out that they've made that kind of mistake, they usually work quickly to fix it before it can become a media shitstorm.
This poster had a story on the front page of HN a couple days ago describing the horror story. That post is almost definitely why this issue got resolved.
If only Google published a post or a support article about this so that anyone searching for this issue could have a way to get it sorted out — if not for all users, at least for the ones who happened to have this recently where Google has data backups.
Having to resort to social media and shame companies into doing what they ought to be doing in the normal course of business and having proper escalation channels (more so for paid products) is ridiculous.
Happy ending for one person. If anything this has scared me away from G Suite. Every once in a while we see an article on how to get away from Google and it sounds like a bunch of kooks, then things like this happen.
If you read the article, you will see they're working to fix it so it doesn't happen again to anybody else. So it's more than a happy ending for just one guy.
>> Happy ending for one person. If anything this has scared me away from G Suite. Every once in a while we see an article on how to get away from Google and it sounds like a bunch of kooks, then things like this happen.
> If you read the article, you will see they're working to fix it so it doesn't happen again to anybody else. So it's more than a happy ending for just one guy.
They're just now working on fixing this particular issue, which appears to have been a problem for at least a year. For many of those people, this fix will be too little, too late.
The fact that he had to write up a horror story in the first place to get any kind of support is what scares me away from G Suite, it's too much of a gamble. I'll continue to be scared away until you can get good support from Google with a phone call or email.
> Google doesn't fix the problem -> They don't care about their users. They suck.
> Google fixes the problem -> Yes, but how many users suffered the problem before? They suck.
You're missing the point. It's not about whether they fixed the problem or not, but but what has to happen to get them to even take a look when someone has a problem.
Well, for me, having a company as big as Google providing a solution and commiting to fix the problem a few days after the guy reported the issue on his blog, is quite a good response. It could be better, but we're not talking about the startup with 10 employees and 300 customers.
You are actually happy that Google only provided support because someone got media attention after ranting about it on a blog. Had this guy never been able to post and get traction, this would still be a problem today.
If anyone reads this story and says "huh, I think that was great customer service by Google!" I can only hope they are my competitor and hope they move all services to Google as quickly as possible.
Where Google would have actually had good customer service? By resolving this without need exceedingly extraordinary means to enact any action whatsoever. Most will never get such attention to their case, and will be told to pound sand.
All I can say is I never want to live in your world. This reminds me of the hosting shops of yesteryear that would post "marketing videos" of their staff taking support tickets while on the road with their Sidekicks. Sorry man - that's horrible level support - if you don't have the staff and processes in place for me to call 24x7 I don't want to do business with you. Pulling to the side of the road and typing on 3G is not heroic support - it's a sign of a horribly managed company. Same exact deal here with Google.
> Well, for me, having a company as big as Google providing a solution and commiting to fix the problem a few days after the guy reported the issue on his blog, is quite a good response.
If that's a "quite a good response," your expectations are way too low.
> after the guy reported the issue on his blog
He had no other option except to "report" it that way, and it was a shot in the dark. Google isn't monitoring all the blogs of the world for when people have issues. He's outrageously lucky.
> but we're not talking about the startup with 10 employees and 300 customers.
Yeah, we're not. Google really ought to have fully-staffed support call centers by now, complete with front-line people who can unlock accounts and escalate to engineers when there's a major issue.
The fact that Google doesn't have anything even comparable to that it why their support is atrocious.
Boy do I feel sorry for the less technically-minded, small business owners, who don't know how to leverage HN.
Having to fight tooth and nail to kick up a widespread fuss is not a viable solution to a technical support line — nor should it warrant gratitude from the community.
Every month, I drop all of my Google files into my OneDrive using "Google takeout". I don't have to use my own bandwidth, just select all of the data I want (everything), choose to have it sent into my OneDrive, then once it's done (takes a few hours) I delete older backups if I need space (with 1TB of OneDrive space, I can hold about 20 of these Google data backups). That way I ensure I always have an almost-up-to-date backup of all of my Google data that I can use to re-start all of my accounts on another provider, if needed.
> Every month, I drop all of my Google files into my OneDrive using "Google takeout". I don't have to use my own bandwidth, just select all of the data I want (everything), choose to have it sent into my OneDrive, then once it's done (takes a few hours) I delete older backups if I need space (with 1TB of OneDrive space, I can hold about 20 of these Google data backups).
Before you mentioned it, I didn't realise that Google Takeout supported Dropbox, OneDrive and Box. Thanks!
Now, if only there was an API for me to automate the process (especially since I have multiple accounts).
Yeah, external HDD is the best option here, but it's problematic if you don't have fast connection. I am on 10Mbps line which is like 1.2MB/s and it would take me about a week to download all my data. And Google Takeout links are valid for only 5 days I believe. I occasionally download everything at work, but it's a little bit troublesome. In such case backing up to different cloud provider is the simplest solution.
However this is not perfect either, because it means sharing my data with another big corporation. While majority of my files in GDrive are encrypted, some are not (e.g. emails). I am yet to find a good solution for myself.
I was thinking about spawning a machine in Digital Ocean, downloading data using Google Skicka [1] (which is awesome tool btw), encrypting with gpg and uploading to different cloud. I just don't know any unix command line tool that could upload to One Drive or Amazon. Any suggestions?
Another solution I am considering is machine in AWS that would download everything, encrypt and store it in Amazon Glacier [2]. I think I'll be eventually trying this once I learn more about Glacier.
EDIT: just did some googling and it seems that rclone [3] may meet my needs.
Sounds like you are looking at more automated solutions anyways, but if you end up making a backup from a Drive that is synced to your computer, realize you are only backing up links to google sheets, docs, and slides, not the actual files. In the case that those files disappear from the web your “files” will no longer open.
As far as I can tell, your only option is to export them in their native format (e.g. .docx) if you actually want the data. Learned this the hard way!
While it's good to hear that landing on HackerNews typically results in a resolution, it's unfortunate it has to always reach that level of publicity for large companies to take personal action. I understand that has to be levels of support you have to go through, but there should be a clear path of escalations to resolve the issues privately. Thank goodness none the less for the power of HN (and social shaming) when all other options are exhausted.
Search, Android, Youtube, Gmail, Chrome and Gdrive are all rife for disruption but either Google will preemptively buy the companies, play monopolistic games like they do with Android [1], or the time and resources required to gain users and traction will bankrupt most alternatives. Without competition you get inferior products, service and markets.
It's difficult to argue otherwise as you have no frame of comparison for things that haven't happened and you can't make any claims of quality without competition. Worse the ad economy has incentivized very poor quality content. This is where free markets and market theory fails as this can't be fixed without regulatory intervention or someone with extremely deep pockets willing to lose large sums of money.
The ad economy has tremendous negative externalities, surveillance, creating incentives for low quality content, click bait, personalized political advertising and people incentivized to produce more and more extremist and divisive content. All this so Google and others can make more money. This seems like a bad deal for the rest of us, akin to polluting the environment for personal benefit.
Last year I temporarily enhanced my ancient GApps account by trialling G Suite. I wanted to be able to switch the primary domain from one I'd be retiring. It turned out that the guide I'd been following to do this was outdated and the functionality was no longer available during trials. So, I ended my trial and seemed to get logged out.
Couldn't log back in. This domain isn't using G Suite, or some such message.
I looked around for how to contact G Suite support. There didn't seem to be a way to do so without being logged into G Suite. I tried going through Google Domains, hoping I'd get forwarded. Didn't really get anywhere, all they could say was that there was no G Suite associated with the domain. The only option seemed to be to start another trial, then ask what happened to the GApps account.
I deliberated for a bit before doing so—would creating the account screw up any possible account recovery? And, in the meantime, signed up with, and got my email handled by someone else.
When I did speak to support, they were friendly but I got no clear idea if it was a bug, or if I'd just absentmindedly clicked through the deletion of my account. I don't really know if the account is gone or exists in some weird state. Luckily, I'd recently pruned the data and backed up. I asked if the account could be recreated but it seems like they can't do that.
I'm about to start a new little thing, and I'd like to use Google products, but what if I have another issue like this and I've got to sleuth out a way to get some help?
If you have a GApps account, just live with your goofy domain name and keep registering it.
This is a problem that is not unique to this specific instance or Google product. Understand that by relying on Google products you are exposing yourself to massive risk that one day something will happen that - unless you get to the front page of HN - may never be fixed. This can leave you or your business essentially paralyzed.
I am fascinated that after the fact that he needed to get to the front page of Hacker News in order to have that issue resolved he keeps using this shitty service.
Like one modern Russian anecdote says - mice were getting pricked, cried, but keep eating cactus.
Classic phishing scam reads exactly like this all the way till the last but one line!
Wonder how he verified if it was real google calling him and asking all these questions and giving instructions or not.
That's what these horror stories teach us, time after time (mail account closed without notice or appeal anybody?).
Not because of technology (Google seem to have this quite good) but because it DOESN'T WANT to understand that customer services is about process, people and problems that need to be handled by humans.
As long as Google wont be able to REALLY commit to customer services, I wont use it for any business critical mission.
Glad this was sorted out. Even gladder that someone posted the link to download all my emails. I thought I had to log in via a client like Thunderbird and manually download everything, but the mbox archive was awesome, and I could import that in minutes into Thunderbird.
So the moral of the story is, If you are to use the google products, make sure you have a high influential Web site or SNS account and in case of emergency, start ranting, draw attention and be on top of HN for a few days.
Let me guess: his previous "G Suite Horror Story" post blew up on twitter, which made him eligible for the Google Support Grand Prize Jackpot: the attention of a real human being empowered to fix the issue.
Second prize is a an email to an inbox no one ever reads.
I also believe Google is experimenting with taking its customer support up a few levels, which for years was figure it out for yourself. With both Chromebooks and YouTube subscription, I've gotten very good support through chat including call backs. Isn't that what Google One, is supposed to be about?? , real customer support if you are a paying Google Drive, G-Suite, YouTube monthly payer, etc.
I had a crush in high school. Ended up going to the same college and were semi-close friends during that time.
One day I heard she had broken up with her boyfriend, and lo and behold I get a text from her that she wants me to come over urgently. It's almost midnight. She says she needs help with her Google account from a tech pro.
The thing is, this woman has a very unique name. Such a beautiful name. Not one I have ever heard before or since. So for all of her online accounts, her username is just her first name. @firstname on Twitter, firstname@yahoo.com, etc.
When I got there she told me she'd decided to finally take my advice. I'd been telling her for years to switch from Yahoo to Gmail. But there was a problem: when we tried to register it, Google told us "this account name is taken".
"This will be simple," I thought. She must have registered it and forgotten about it, we'll just send the password reset to her Yahoo email. But when we went to the password reset page Google told us "this account does not exist".
Seemingly contradictory. It must be a bug!
I told her I would need to do some research and hurried out. I remember the confused look on her face, I don't think she wanted me to leave. Surely a bit of Googling and emailing and I could get her the coveted email address and be the hero! Stupid me.
After digging for hours I did find some mysterious @google.com email addresses and I tried those. I think I found a Google employee via my extended Facebook network and reached out. A week went by, I never heard back.
One day I decided to try to get into the Google campus in Cambridge. Unsurprisingly, I was not granted entry. The doorman was amused by my attempt at a romantic gesture so he said maybe he'd tell my story to somebody inside.
I even applied for a job at Google so that I could hopefully speak to a recruiter. Someone, anyone at Google. My time was running out. But at the time I had no experience and was a sophomore in college. No calls.
I'm still friends with that woman but nothing ever happened. She's now engaged.
I know it wasn't Google's fault that I lost my college crush. If I hadn't been so socially inept at the time it may have gone differently.
But if anyone from Google ever sees this, please get in touch[1]. The bug still exists. I just know she'd be really happy to have that email address.
Enginerd 1: Today the strangest thing happened. I was walking around campus, and a beautiful girl rode up to me on a bicycle. She hopped off the bike, took off all her clothes, and said to me "take what you want!" And that is how I got this fantastic new bike!
Enginerd 2: nods approvingly Those clothes would not have fit you anyway.
Was the name five characters or less? I don't know what the UI was like at the time you tried. There are Gmail accounts that short, but they have been created by hand, usually for other Google colleagues, by someone on the Gmail team. E.g. paul@gmail.com is, obviously, Paul Buchheit.
Then perhaps the likeliest explanation is that the account was created, then deleted. Google accounts do not get recycled. It should be straightforward to verify that theory, although it might take a month for it to enter a hard-deleted state (I've never done that).
The people who could figure what happened are those that work on GAIA (https://developers.google.com/issue-tracker/concepts/access-...). Account information and history are a touchy issue, so I doubt anyone would get involved, unless they had reason to (abuse, legal action, proper law enforcement request, etc.). Looking up user information on a hunch is a sure way for an employee to get in trouble, since access to the directory is heavily tracked. Even acknowledging the existence of an account at some point in the past carries risk...
It's not a bug. Google doesn't allow similar looking emails to exist at the same time for gmail.com for security reasons.
e.g. johnsmith@gmail.com and j0hnsm1th@gmail.com aren't allowed to exist at the same time. If one was created first, you are not allowed to create the other.
