[wpietri]

I don't think engineering is the problem here. As an example, Toyota, a very engineering-driven company, is also famous for customer focus.

I think the problem is that Google is mostly about selling users' eyeballs to their real customers, advertisers. That's not a business of making individual users happy; it's essentially statistical in nature. With a search engine, if something works for 80 or 90% of people, that's great. If it's bad for the rest, well, tough luck for them. It's very hard to go from that to seeing each individual as valuable and important.

[ehsankia]

it costs $xxK to buy a car. It costs 0$ to use Gmail, Drive, Youtube, etc. These two are not gonna have the same level of customer support. Fi is a paid service, and I do expect it to have a better support (which in my own experience, they do), but to compare Google as a whole to Toyota doesn't seem fair.

[wpietri]

Fair or not, I think it's accurate. If it costs $0 to use something, you're probably not the customer. You're the product.

I agree Fi is different, and I think it's reasonable for you to want better support. I'm saying that since Google is not used to lines of business where they actually have to care about every user, I'm saying it's unsurprising you won't get it.

[dhimes]

Your parent's point though is that with the free offerings, you're not the customer. Google's advertisers are.

With the paid offerings you are the customer and comparing Google's CS to Toyota's or anybody else's is entirely fair.

[ehsankia]

To which I agree. Fi should and (normally) does have much much better customer support than average free Google products.

[walterbell]

> That's not a business of making individual users happy; it's essentially statistical in nature.

Good point. Could telecom service (Project Fi) for individuals be moved to a different division of Alphabet?