[pasbesoin]

I'll share my personal response. I suspect I'm not alone in this.

Google is incurring and running up against some real trust issues.

I haven't always agreed with their decisions, but even when I became discouraged, I'd still glean information and news that showed or hinted at concerned, ethical people behind the closed doors.

But... the continuing lack of a public, human interface to their endeavors, and the increasing... unreliability of their products. (Well, their products to us end users of their ostensible services, as opposed to us as products delivered via their marketing and advertising mechanisms.)

I increasingly don't trust them.

And this is going to be a serious problem for Google, in the long run. Once you lose reliability and accountability, people start looking elsewhere.

Ok, this is a bit of a long reach, but look at Apple. Jobs was, ultimately if somewhat capriciously, a primary source of Apple's accountability. And now he's gone.

Even if people couldn't explain it and articulate it fully, they felt concern that his passing potentially represented a significant shift.

The more and longer Google continues to refuse to acknowledge -- and address -- the gaming of the IP/content/distribution systems, the more distrust builds.

Even still, this "silence" is not consistent and company-wide. For example, Google Fiber -- at least in its incarnation; I'm less certain about it's continuing and evolving existence -- is a fairly strong statement (even if and as also somewhat self-serving; this is a business, after all) about the current state and needed direction of development and growth of connectivity.

But I don't know that this "under the radar" approach suffices. Back to the original point of this thread: I don't trust that anything on YouTube is going to be there, tomorrow.

The Web is failing as archive. More and more, the public is learning that it is indeed transient.

If you want people to "live" there and to trust to your online services, this may be a bad thing.

(Yes, I'm one isolated opinion, and I may be blowing smoke. But I'm disgusted at the increasing constriction back towards an entrenched status quo -- or the attempts at same.)

[d2vid]

I've been running into bad google experiences lately. I have a work email address that uses google for domains, and my account was completely disabled by google about a week ago with no response yet to my repeated contact attempts. Their error message was not exactly comforting, it included the following:

Google reserves the right to: Terminate your account at any time, for any reason, with or without notice.

I don't particularly care about that particular gmail account, but it's terrifying that they believe they have the right to do the exact same thing to my personal gmail account, which I definitely DO care about. That seems unethical, even if it's perhaps legal.

[magicalist]

Is there any company that doesn't reserve the right to terminate a free hosted email account without notice?

If you want an SLA, you (almost always) have to pay for it. And if you pay for Google Apps, you also get phone support...

In the meantime: IMAP backups. If that's too much of a pain, there are also a ton of services (free or otherwise) which will do automatic backups for you, though you should really (really) make sure you trust them and their security procedures before you hand off access to your primary email account to them.

[gcb0]

data backups: this point is moot because, who cares about archived email? that's like 1% of the pain of loosing an account. 99% of the problem is the messages you will never be able to read.

Same with the youtube channel from OP. i'm 100% certain that the guy has all his videos ready for re-upload. but who cares? He had worked hard promoting that channel in several venues and acquiring an audience to THAT channel. That is lost forever.

[suhastech]

That is the reason I wrote a Mac app to do just that. Atleast for emails as the parent comment is suggesting.

More on the that: http://thehorcrux.com/why-i-built-horcrux-app/

</shamelessplug>

[rhizome]

I've come to assume that, like Paypal, they are trying to go as long as possible without implementing customer service.

[gcb0]

You mean Product Service. Because you're their product. They DO have customer service.

Remember, google customers are advertisers.

[awj]

Actually if you're using google apps for business, you are a customer.

Also, that bit of snark is getting old and tired, and wasn't ever very accurate to begin with.

[minikites]

It's incredibly accurate.

"In 2011, 96% of Google's revenue was derived from its advertising programs. For the 2006 fiscal year, the company reported $10.492 billion in total advertising revenues and only $112 million in licensing and other revenues."

[rhizome]

You're being That Guy. You know what I mean.

[jamesaguilar]

> Yes, I'm one isolated opinion

Not really. You're essentially saying the same thing that people have been saying about Google on HN at least as long as I've been a member. (That's two and a half years on this user name, and another I don't know how long on one that wasn't my real name.)

[DanBC2]

> And this is going to be a serious problem for Google, in the long run. Once you lose reliability and accountability, people start looking elsewhere.

Google's customers are advertisers. They get personal support, with real people. It is the advertisers that need to be reassured about Google's services; who need to be convinced that Google do not tolerate any kind of extra ad clicking. (Not saying that's what happened here!!)

It is incredibly annoying that quality original content gets removed while the blurry cat clips get reposted all over youtube. And the blurry reposts prove that YouTube will continue to make money for Google even if they take down original content.