[EarthAmbassador]

Exactly.

I don't understand how a community such as this, as connected as it is, can't back channel a message to Google brass to do something about these lockouts, which occur frequently and are unnecessary. There is no way Google doesn't know about them.

Gmail is an essential piece of pervasive personal infrastructure, upon which hundreds of millions of people rely. People are losing irreplaceable data for lack of care on the part of Google. The cost of providing a way to prove identity while maintaining security ought to be part of the cost of doing business for Google as it provides Gmail.

Surely there are some Google employees lurking who can chime in on this frustrating neglect.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

The cost of adding a support desk outweighs any potential profit, I would imagine by a huge amount given accounts are ‘free’.

It’s not that the executive don’t know, it’s that they don’t care.

[duskdozer]

If they weren't making enough money from having people use their "free" accounts, they wouldn't offer them.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

I’m not disputing that, I’m suggesting the cost of support staff outweighs the value (to google) of retaining broken or lost accounts. I’m not a legal expert but it might be a good pre-emptive move to add support even if it’s extremely poor purely to avoid government regulation (given identity is basically bound to email, it might be a unique scenario if someone is unable to identify because of a private company, etc).