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Google+ Account Suspensions Over ToS Drawing Fire
ideonexus writes "Reports of Google+ deleting user accounts are all over, including Limor Fried — AKA Lady Ada / Adafruit Industries (recently featured in Wired Magazine) and former Google employee Kirrily 'Skud' Robert for violating Google's identity ToS. Other users are finding themselves locked out of their accounts without an explanation of how they violated the ToS. The worst part for these individuals is that a lock-out of Google+ includes being locked out of all Google services, including email, calendar, and documents."
There have been some claims that this is an example Google being evil but this seems more like incompetence and hamfistedness than evil. This would be silly and minor if not for the reports that some of these people can't access their other Google products they use. Many people use gmail for their primary email. If any of these people use it for business they could be actively losing money from this. But this does lead to two basic lessons which are apparently not repeated enough: First, when you use a free service you get what you paid for. Second, backing things up is always a good idea.
You know for all of Facebook's privacy infringement, there is one ace in the sleeve Google+ has over their users that Facebook does not: Gmail.
Getting all your services from one company sure is convenient until you have problems with one part of their service but not the other.
Like getting you Internet shut off because you are in dispute with the cell phone devision. We don't learn shit from history.
Kobnyc in TFA comments:
"The article refers to deletions "en masse" and "striking number" and "dam had burst" etc but nowhere provides any hard or soft numbers to go with these clearly inflammatory adjectives."
I, too, want some numbers.
its a good way to lose business. google should congratulate the morons running these policies. they killed google+ before it started for me.
and on another note, this situation basically drew my attention to the fact that relying on google is not a good thing.
Read radical news here
Or (more appropriately) George Orwell.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I read the article and the biggest and most fearful thing that many people who were affected by this was that all of their Google services, including Gmail were affected and disabled.
I only use Gmail for e-mail functionality because it is free and convenient and it is my primary e-mail address that has stayed universal through ISP changes and moves. I was quite well aware of Google's privacy policy and advertisement angle along with the fact that all of them will be available forever to Google, before I signed up to Gmail and have been weary every since. The offer of convenient, free, reliable, spam-free, managed by someone else, and universally accepted Gmail account had a lot of benefits since I didn't have to buy my own domain, maintain my own e-mail server, and deal with spam filtering
I still haven't been burned by Gmail but I'm now wondering that since Google has become such a large entity it is surely going to suffer the fate of a behemoth afflicted by blind bureaucracy and the e-mails that they have forever will somehow get out to agencies, companies, or people who I don't want them to see.
I'm going to seriously look into the technical and logical feasibility of install a mail server on my Linux box in my house which is going to require that I manage my own services and spam filtering along with dealing with the hoops of trying to run a mail server behind an ISP with my own domain name.
This is not what Google is doing. They allow multiple people with the same name, it's just underage or fraudulent info gets you banned.
I removed all of my "correct, yet questionable" data, eg: Location: Earth, Sol System, Milky Way Galaxy (A suburb of the Virgo Galactic Cluster) -- just in case. Actually, I removed ALL of the optional data about me, except for my name. Way to fail at your core competency Google (that is, getting me to allow them to aggregate my data).
With all the fucking automated badassery that is google, why do they not simply send you a notice or email:
IMHO, this would be much better than what they are currently doing...
Actually, Google is attempting to woo celebrities to their platform, such as Lady Gaga.
The irony is that Lady Gaga isn't her actual name.
That would be fine except that some have apparently either broken a rule without knowing it and can't find out what it was, they have no way to get re-instated even where it is reasonably clear that the violation was unintentional and won't be repeated, and they lose other services they have been using without incident for some time as well.
There is also room for interpretation as to what exactly is a pseudonym. In many cases of a famous nickname, using one's actual legal name would be an obfuscation of identity. Many have used a nickname for so long that it's the one they have internally connected to self and the legal name seems like someone else.
I won't be getting a Google+ account. I don't care whether this is doing evil or sheer incompetence (I'm betting on the latter), but to lose access to all Google-related services especially Gmail, is complete and utter BS. The fact that a company the size of Google can get by without any sort of customer service is beyond me.
So basically, they shut down my account, but are unable to provide any details why. In speaking with lawyers, it is simply not cost effective to try to sue them. I would spend far more in lawyer fees than I could ever hope to earn back. Verizon and Amazon both specifically requested my application for their stores, and it is still happily listed and selling in them.
I guess my point was simply that "important enough" is a bar so high, virtually no one is likely to meet it. In my own case, my application was making just shy of $50k/yr when it was shut down without expressed reason, notice, or appeals process. Even in that situation, the lawyers said it wasn't worth it. Given the lost income, I was probably at the top 5% of people for a potential claim for damages, so what chance does the super majority of people really have if Google gives them the middle finger?
I'm really not anti-Google, and I hope I don't read like I am. In general, I do really like their services, technologies, etc. My sole complaint is simply that if you have a problem with them, they flip the bird and disappear. You have no ability to even try to reason with them. They are like the "Judge Dredd" of internet services. Once they decided on something (completely without any input from you), it's done and you're f---ed. They don't even bother to pretend otherwise, the "We are unable to provide further details regarding this issue" pretty much proves that.