[amenod]

Not sure why you are being downvoted, you have a point. There is no excuse for the way Google is operating now - poor customer support, the only recourse twits and HN posts.

I think it also hurts Google themselves. There is a reason they have trouble competing with AWS. Why should developers trust Google that there will be a person on the other side helping them out when things go wrong? And they always do, at worst possible time. Amazon, for all its problems, has excellent customer service.

So your parent's attempt to fix this is a PR stunt at best. If they (/Google) care about this, they should fix the problems in the process:

- define, hardcode and publish rules that will lead to successfull e-mail delivery (SPF, DKIM, history,...)

- establish a gmail technical customer support service

And they should stop with preferential treatment of those who shame them publicly. Or do they want all of us to start doing the same?

[WrtCdEvrydy]

> they should stop with preferential treatment of those who shame them publicly

That's the only way companies care in the 21st century, 3 weeks on an email thread, one tweet and suddenly everyone cares.

[usefulcat]

> Or do they want all of us to start doing the same?

An increase in public shamings probably means that public shamings become less news- or interest-worthy. So an increase in shamings might not have as much effect as you might expect.

[danielparks]

That’s true, but I don’t think we're anywhere near there yet. Especially when it comes to the mainstream — most people outside of tech don’t have any idea this is a problem.

(FWIW, I don’t seem to have this problem in a significant way, but that might be because I have DMARC set up.)

[sumosudo]

hmmmm, so do I and still my emails are unsolicited.

[newsoul2019]

I don't think you can have an open, healthy email ecosystem, when the parties involved (the people running and managing email infrstructure) can't communicate with each other and get help.

[CamperBob2]

Their customer support is just fine. Only trouble is, we're not the customer, we're the product. (And no, I'm not interested in hearing about how that's a hackneyed worn-out cliché, or whatever, given that it's a true statement. Downvote and move on.)

A big part of the problem with Google taking everything over is that only in very limited situations -- the service formerly known as YouTube Red, for instance -- are we given the ability to actually conduct business with them as a paying customer. Conventionally, Google users don't even rise to the status of sharecroppers, since we're the "crops" being sold to advertisers. They expect us to depend on them for the everyday conduct of our personal lives and careers, yet the only way to appeal for help is to start a shitstorm on Twitter or HN and hope somebody notices.

[shawnz]

> I'm not interested in hearing about how that's a hackneyed worn-out cliché

Well, it's a hackneyed worn-out cliché. Without the users there's no viable product. That's what makes them the customers and that's why they need adequate customer support. The fact that you pay for the product with ad impressions rather than dollars doesn't change anything about that dynamic.

[CamperBob2]

Well, it's a hackneyed worn-out cliché. Without the users there's no viable product. That's what makes them the customers

No, that's what makes them "users." The customers are the advertisers who actually pay money to Google. You can rest assured that they don't have to post a cri de coeur on social media to get a response from Google when something goes wrong.

IMO, a company that does its level best to act like vital public infrastructure needs to be held to standards appropriate to vital public infrastructure. If that's a controversial point of view, then so be it.

[shawnz]

> No, that's what makes them "users." The customers are the advertisers who actually pay money to Google.

I understand your idea. But in my opinion this is a useless and unconventional definition of the word 'customer'. The customer is the one who receives a service in exchange for compensation. In this case the service is gmail and the compensation is ad impressions. The fact that Google can sell those ad impressions is secondary to that dynamic. If there were no users willing to provide that compensation in exchange for access to gmail, then there'd be no product, and there'd be no secondary market for selling those advertisements. Meanwhile even with no advertisers there would still be a product, and there would still be other avenues for monetizing it.

> You can rest assured that they don't have to post a cri de coeur on social media to get a response from Google when something goes wrong.

Are you sure about that? A quick google for "adwords support experiences" gives quite a number of telling stories to the contrary. Besides, there are several orders of magnitude more users than there are advertisers, so obviously it's going to be much easier for users' issues to get lost in the noise. And obviously no advertising agencies are going to be getting any sympathy by complaining on Twitter.

[slacka]

> - define, hardcode and publish rules that will lead to successfull e-mail delivery (SPF, DKIM, history,...)

This has existed for years:

https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/checkmx/check?domain=tab...

If your site passes and is not on a blacklist, your email gets delivered.

[matrixagent]

This is not doing what you think it does. And it's the second comment where you are spreading your misinformation I've seen in this thread now. :( This tool is for people who want to send their emails via GSuite and their own domain. Not a lot of people in this thread want that, and it certainly has nothing to do at all with what is being discussed in the comment threads where you replied to.

[gaadd33]

That says you must permit google to send email on your behalf in your SPF record. How is that relevant at all for sending email to Google?