[mamadrood]

The worse thing is, I don't think they care about losing users, they are like 90s Microsoft, there are no alternative for most of the services they give. They would care about losing customers, but Google customers are not its users, it's the guys who buy advertising space.

[johansch]

For every 1 user they spend $25 on not losing they could get another 10 users in emerging regions that will make them lots of more money in a few years.

The tyranny of being a customer to a company that has 2-3 billion "customers".

[johansch]

So this is apparently offensive in HN-land. Since I have no idea why, how about if you also leave a comment with your next downvote, deal? I'm honestly really curious.

[mSparks]

mostly google employees reading hn these days would be my guess.

anything that suggests google isnt and never was the "do no evil" company and is rather just another pyschopathic corporate machine will just attract the wrath of said psychopathic corporate machine.

[crystalmeph]

This guy was actually a customer, he had made several purchases that were locked up in his account. With Google Play, every user is at least a potential paying customer, so there's really no excuse for this lack of customer service.

It is possible that the reason their customer service is so terrible sometimes is because the culture still doesn't necessarily think of users as customers. But they've got strong competition from Apple, at least, so I would expect this kind of situation to get better once they manage that mind shift.

[iainmerrick]

Even if that's true, they still care about losing users -- users are inventory!

[a3n]

This is just "shrinkage." It's factored in.

A certain percentage of your inventory will be stolen off the shelves per year. Your rental property will stand empty a certain percentage of the year. A certain number of your cows and chickens will die, or fall ill and be "culled." A certain number of your engineers will move on. A certain number of your containers will fall overboard and spread yellow rubber duckies around the word's oceans.

[morganvachon]

Yes, but if your inventory is over a billion units worldwide, you don't even notice a few thousand a year disappearing from the shelves.