Google is well-aware that doing business on an Internet scale means you start clocking measurable economic losses immediately when the site goes down, and for all intents and purposes Google has just handed Dropbox a service interruption because Google far and away the most powerful entity on the Internet. I can't even bring Dropbox up in my browser by typing in their domain name, to say nothing of the majority of Internet users who use Google as their primary means of navigation.
If it were my business that was down, I'd go for the PR route before asking for a review, because you know what? Google sucks at putting a human in the loop. They hate it. It costs money and doesn't scale to the entire Internet.
When I type stuff into forms at Google, I expect to hear back around a week later on those occassions when they actually get back to me, and I pay Google thousands of dollars to provide the service I'm asking about. One would hope I'm getting the good customer experience compared to some anonymous malware distributor saying they've reformed their ways.
(Less you think I'm joking: Google for [reinclusion request] to see what Google's suggested timeline is for reinclusion in their index if you are bounced out for SEO practices they don't approve of. Hint: think months, not minutes.]
In the amusing-to-contemplate-fantasy-world where there was any entity as powerful as Google on the Internet, and that entity blocked access to 60% of Google users for distributing malware (well, it is highly likely that Google is a contributing factor to more malware infections than anyone else on earth -- see "owns navigation on the Internet"), I highly doubt that Larry would ask Sergey to write something into a web form somewhere and then, you know, wait until somebody got around to addressing it.
I don't think Patrick read into anything there. He does not imply that Google did this intentionally at all.
His point holds water for me, getting blocked by Google is a huge problem for any business, and its impossible to get in touch with Google short of making a fuss.
Consider this tweet from Dropbox:
"Having trouble reaching the right folks @ Google re: browser warnings; email abuse@dropbox.com to help, thanks"
Not to mention, the timing sucks: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=935009 (Google announces today they've increased their storage quota to 20GB/$5, which happens to be very competitive with Dropbox).
Not getting out the tinfoil hat, but this isn't right.
Not really, his point is valid. They wield a terrifying amount of power over most web-based businesses, and they're not very careful with it as they're not beholden to any site. If you get bumped from their index, you can immediately lose a very large percentage of your traffic and have very little hope of regaining it on the MONTHS timeframe. For a startup, that could mean game over.
Google sucks at putting a human in the loop. They hate it. It costs money and doesn't scale to the entire Internet.
Dammit all that free at point of use stuff Google keeps giving us, I want them to have a guy retyping all my emails into Gmail to make it so prohibitively expensive that they have to close all their services?? That'll show 'em.
If it were my business that was down, I'd go for the PR route before asking for a review, because you know what? Google sucks at putting a human in the loop. They hate it. It costs money and doesn't scale to the entire Internet.
When I type stuff into forms at Google, I expect to hear back around a week later on those occassions when they actually get back to me, and I pay Google thousands of dollars to provide the service I'm asking about. One would hope I'm getting the good customer experience compared to some anonymous malware distributor saying they've reformed their ways.
(Less you think I'm joking: Google for [reinclusion request] to see what Google's suggested timeline is for reinclusion in their index if you are bounced out for SEO practices they don't approve of. Hint: think months, not minutes.]
In the amusing-to-contemplate-fantasy-world where there was any entity as powerful as Google on the Internet, and that entity blocked access to 60% of Google users for distributing malware (well, it is highly likely that Google is a contributing factor to more malware infections than anyone else on earth -- see "owns navigation on the Internet"), I highly doubt that Larry would ask Sergey to write something into a web form somewhere and then, you know, wait until somebody got around to addressing it.