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by CamperBob2 2615 days ago
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.
1 comments
shawnz 2615 days ago
> 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.

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CamperBob2 2615 days ago
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.

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shawnz 2615 days ago
> 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.

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