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by wbobeirne 2430 days ago
I'm actually really interested to see Google start charging for things instead of the usual cycle of spinning things up and shutting them down when the business model isn't there. I'd much rather pay 100$ a year for their services if it would guarantee their availability, and reduce the pressure to commoditize my data.
2 comments
noxToken 2430 days ago
Am I going to pay $100/year for the same services and still get ignored when I get locked out of my account? Enterprise users already pay for Google services. It seems like recourse for them is no different than a free tier user (aside from blowing up on Twitter/Reddit/HN). Why would anyone want to pay for that?
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sct202 2430 days ago
It seems like the most reliable support system with Google is to have a SWE friend who works there who will document and enter tickets for you, which is completely absurd for a company of their size.
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godzillabrennus 2430 days ago
Knowing people at Google is absolutely the only way to get help with crucial issues.

Silly doesn’t begin to describe it.

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bittercynic 2430 days ago
It's been a few years, but the school where I worked used Google Apps for Education, and when I called for support they were always pretty helpful. Has that deteriorated recently?
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zenexer 2430 days ago
They'll be helpful until your whole organization gets shut down for "abuse". What kind of abuse? They won't tell you. No human will talk to you.

Microsoft does the exact same thing with O365. Even knowing people at Microsoft and getting tickets internally escalated and re-escalated, it took me far too long to get things unlocked, and I never got an answer on what caused it. A week later, I was locked out again. Same routine. Finally got back in, and a bunch of music that I had legally purchased from 7digital and stored in OneDrive was mysteriously missing. During the whole process, as soon as anyone you talk to sees the state of your account, they'll refuse to continue talking. You have to fill out a generic form, and you don't receive a response. Either your account gets unlocked an indefinite amount of time later, or it doesn't.

All the major cloud providers seem to operate that way.

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mrgreenfur 2430 days ago
Isn't the business model there: analyze the data uploaded and use it to enrich targeting. This is what they've done with every other free product. Maybe when we pay outright that will stop?
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