Slashdot Mirror
Where Do You Go When Google Locks You Out?
Lobais sends in the cautionary tale of a man who was locked out of Google Groups for three years — losing the ability to administer his own open source project in the process. "After about a year of using Google Groups for the PyChess project, I started [noticing] a problem. When I wrote mails to the list, no one would answer. And when I answered other peoples' post[s], they seamed to ignore them and press for new answers. As I tried to check the online group to see what was happening, I got a 403 Forbidden error. After a short while I realized that this error was given for any page on the groups.google.com subdomain. The lockout meant that I was unable to manage the PyChess mailing list. I was unable to fight increasing spam level, and more importantly I couldn't reply to anybody in my community. I wasn't even able to visit the Google help forums, which are all on groups.google.com. As the services are free of charge, I never really expected any support options. ... How can we know how often this kind of thing happens? If any admin can lock you out by a sloppy click, and give you no option to defend yourself, then it is bound to happen once in a while."
seems to be a common theme with free software and free services - it often starts out as the cheap option, but ends up costing more. i'm fine with people using free stuff, but seriously don't complain when it blows up in your face.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I've always felt that it's in the best interest of entities like Google to add some sort of official, all-service-reaching appeals process to rectify erroneous enforcement actions, or at least give an answer as to how customers broke the Terms of Use so that they can correct such behavior in the future. Being that Google is so huge and that many people's livelihoods depend on it, even if many of these critical services are free, it's in their best interest, and having a department that makes getting the ear of such a huge entity straightforward would really increase customer loyalty as well as reduce apprehension of arbitrary lock-outs.
They don't care about your chess hobby. They don't care about you. Not Apple, not Google, not Microsoft, not Donner, not Blitzen. You're a number, a nothing. The cloud will swallow you whole.
Set up your own damn server.
Not quite, with the free support they didn't fix the issue - they took a year to tell him he'd broken the Terms of Service, and then no reply as to why. Even then, when trialling the paid-for support, they still managed to bill him when they shouldn't have.
As for not being news-worthy, how else can people highlight these kinds of issues?!
I think you've misunderstood the term 'Free Software'. The word 'Free' in Free Software is used to refer to *freedom*, not the cost.
So with software the situation is actually the other way round to the way you present it. If you are using Free(dom) Software, then you have the source and can do whatever you need with it and you aren't held hostage by someone else's actions. If you're using non-Free Software, *then* you seriously shouldn't complain when it blows up in your face.
Using non-Free Software (even if it's gratis) often starts out as the 'cheap option' -- not necessarily in terms of cost, but in terms of local knowledge and training and effort. But it often ends up costing more, because of its inherent limitations and because you can't actually *fix* it to meet your requirements, or even get bug-fixes for it without having to replace it wholesale with a new version.
Whether it be google maps or other service, I feel the curtain will come down. I predict Gmail and shared docs will be a loss leader, but eventually I think google maps will be "called in".
They will impose a stricter map-refreshs-per-hour policy and charge a fee(albeit small) for that Google Maps Key. Next thing, that small Web House Company that did sites for those real estate agents, Rental Car Companies, and Motels will have to pay a fee, and need to recoup that.
Put all your eggs in someone elses basket at your peril I say. At least with hosting you can have backups and pick up another provider if things turn to custard.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
So just make sure you always have a fallback email account. If your life really does revolve around being able to post to, or administer, a particular group of people then why not set up a secondary account with the same privileges? It's not that hard to do.
Now, if you'll just hang on a second I'll pop over to my alternate /. account and mod this up.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Google does not owe you anything. When will people realize that? You outsource everything to Google, then complain when they lock you out. This is why one should avoid services like Googles, and it will be worse when they will try to convince you you should use some Web 2.0 computer operating system. In fact, this has nothing to do with computers - if you sleep, drink, eat and work at somebody elses property, don't expect to feel like home. It's sort of surprising (or maybe not!) to even encounter such questions on Slashdot - you actually expect everything to work fine, when you are but a mere invisible client to a benemoth that Google has become. If you want to be smart, rent your own domain name and website for 100$ a year, spend a week coding it (obviously if you can do PyChess, you should be able to do some PHP and databases), and tap yourself on your shoulder - you have just achieved independence from Google, and are now part of a distributed Internet model, instead of the ugly, error-prone, monopolized client-server system, where even contacting support is a reason for headache. Now, c'mon - WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? Google has millions of users, they have bold ambitions, but you cannot server the entire planet EFFICIENTLY with one corporation, no matter how large (bureaucracy takes over), you just can't. This was ought to happen, either to you or somebody else, and it will happen again, make no mistake about it.
Google is learning that Customer Service/Support doesn't scale as easily as their other services.
For this situation, use an anony server to get through to fix the problem.
As to idiots, Google is not alone. Yahoo.com is filled with assholes in tech. I just dealt with one who can't understand problems.
And your lawyer's claim would have been what, exactly?
"They stopped giving me free stuff, without giving a good reason. It's ILLEGAL for them to not give me free stuff!"
Believe me, I've been there, and it sucks (my domain - predating Google - was once misclassified as a spam site by Google's search algorithm; the preferred/only method of resolving this is to know-a-guy who's facebook friends with Matt Cutts), but I don't know any legal theory that entitles anyone to monetary damages for not letting you play with their toys, even if the reason is silly/nonexistent.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.