German Court: Google Must Stop Ignoring Customer E-mails

jfruh writes If you send an email to support-de@google.com, Google's German support address, you'll receive an automatic reply informing you that Google will not respond to or even read your message, due to the large number of emails received at that address. Now a German court has ruled (PDF) that this is an unacceptable response, based on a German law saying that companies must provide a means for customers to communicate with them. Update: 09/12 15:47 GMT by S : Updated to fix the links.

Comments

Re:define "customer"

[Anonymous Coward]

actually lots of people are google customers in the sense of payimg them money. Google play, etc

Re:define "customer"

[GroeFaZ]

A customer is someone who receives a service from a company, even if the (monetary) price for that service is zero. Google and their users have agreed on certain terms which gives the customer some rights (using the services offered by Google), and Google some rights (collecting and using the customer's personal information for ads, etc.)

Re:define "customer"

[GroeFaZ]

That may be a rhetoric criticism to be leveled against Google, but the law has a different opinion. Google and their users have entered mutual contractual obligations. Whether or not those obligations directly involve money in any way does not matter.

define

[aaaaaaargh!]

Sure they are customers. They are paying with their personal data, which Google hords and then sells to third parties. Without the people who use Google's free services, Google wouldn't earn a cent.

Re:define

[swillden]

If that were so then Google could just show the ads randomly and besaid third parties had no way of ever finding out about their fraud.

Not true, for two reasons.

First, advertisers only pay if you click the on the ad. Advertisers can easily verify that the number of clicks Google claims corresponds to the number of hits their web site receives with a Google referral. There's some noise in that measurement, so the correlation isn't perfect, but it would be easy to see if it were systematically off.

Second, Google provides advertisers with extensive tools to help them determine how effective their ads are, or click "conversion rate", which boils down to revenue per click. Advertisers like Google because they can know exactly how effective their ad campaign is.

Note that I'm talking about Google's traditional method. In the last few years, Google has also acquired a (much smaller) business in "display" ads, in which Google gets paid per thousand ad "impressions". Even there, the advertiser can measure click-through effectiveness, though.

But it doesn't work that way. Besides, Google also sells data to the government, e.g. to law enforcement agencies.

Google does not sell any data to the government, or to law enforcement agencies. Google complies with proper, legal requests for data, as specified by law, but does not get compensated for fulfilling those requests. Google is a publicly-traded company, which means they have to file extensive financial reports detailing their incomes and expenses so if I were wrong you could easily prove it.

(Disclaimer: I work for Google but I'm not speaking in an official capacity. My job at Google is writing code. But everything I've said here has been stated repeatedly in public by people who are official spokespeople. In particular with respect to the government request question, see David Drummond's many public statements.)

Re:well done mods.

[Anonymous Coward]

there haven't been editors around these parts since since VB6 days

Re:We need more like this

[drinkypoo]

We need more customer protection like this.

This is not customer protection. The users have not in fact brought any custom to google. They're receiving a free good or service and should not be entitled to anything.

Re:Really?

[geekmux]

The only difference between Google and most customer service today is that at least Google are honest about it and tell you that you will be ignored. Most other companies will just ignore your email and not tell you or leave you in a call queue for so long that you end up having to hang up and go do something else.

I'd rather Google even be more honest and not even provide a support email at all.

Trying to label a email address with a permanent piss-off-we're-busy auto-response as "support" is like trying to label a mannequin as human. Kinda looks like the real thing, but you're not fooling anyone here.

Re: define "customer"

[CaptSlaq]

I pay Google in screen space rather than USD, so that still makes me a customer

Says the guy who runs adblock on everything.

Re:define "customer"

[Mr. Slippery]

...but some European countries (France is another one) have all these stupid little "we're special...and we don't understand the internet" rules...

Sounds like these nations understand the internet quite well. They understand that it's not magic and does not relieve companies of their responsibilities to operate in an accountable manner. "But...we do it the internet!" is not a legal escape clause, as companies like Uber are finally being taught.