
Dumped by Google - stkhlm
http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2013/04/22/dumped-by-google/
======
zalzane
I think what's even more horrifying that isn't mentioned in the article is how
many services use email as a form of user authentication.

If you lose access to your gmail account, you also lose access to changing
your password on any service that makes you do so through an email link - I
know of some services that don't even let you change your account email
without clicking on an email authentication link.

So not only is there the always-lingering possibility of losing your google
account to automated shutdowns, you can also lose access to services that you
use that use authentication through email, quite an uneasy thought.

~~~
coderdude
Unfortunately though, it's poor practice to let a user change their email
address without first sending a confirmation email. If you don't confirm the
action before making the change then bad people can lock out the true owner of
an account simply by being logged-in.

~~~
trhtrsh
Which is why everyone should have their own domain name, or have a _contract_
with a reputable provider.

It's crazy to cede over ones entire _identity_ to a free "best-effort"
service.

~~~
drdaeman
Identities and accounts are two separate matters.

Accounts can only be some of identity's credentials. You are not your email
address (and you should never be considered so), but your email provider can
optionally act as one of trusted third parties who can assert your identity.
Not the other round.

Also, you can't really own a domain name — you can only rent it from your
domain registrar, in _almost_ a same manner you rent your email account. And
the idea of paying for keeping my own identity somehow frightens me.

~~~
trhtrsh
You can pay for many years in advance, and you can register for auto-renewal.

Paying to keep your identity is far better than borrowing it from someone who
has made no promises to you.

~~~
drdaeman
Well, if possible, I'd really prefer to actually _posess_ my identity (like I
possess my GPG keypair) and be _the_ authoritative source of it, not _lease_
it.

I really don't want others to _define_ who I am, and prefer them to merely
_assert_ my own definition of myself.

Unfortunately, modern trends of the Web is to make things work in exactly the
opposite way.

(Original comment was edited from one-liner to a more verbose explaination.)

------
dendory
The most interesting part was the reason he believes the account was
suspended. He was working on a spreadsheet containing usernames and passwords.
If that's really the case, it means some automated system scans not only your
email, but documents you work on, for things like password lists, and right
away assumes you're up to no good, killing your account. Scary.

~~~
ceph_
Sounds like a really wild accusation to me. Is their anything to back this up
besides their speculation?

~~~
tytso
There's also the question of whether the original poster was telling the
truth, or even told the whole story. If for example, the spreadsheet had a
form for the entry of usernames and passwords, and someone came across it
(maybe because it was e-mailed out to lots of people), and reported it as an
attempted account phishing form, that would certainly explain an account
getting suspended for an TOS violation --- and as far as I know, someone who
is trying to use their Google account for phishing doesn't get escalating
warnings... and I think most people would agree with this.

~~~
prawn
Should still get better recourse than tapping people you know and crossing
your fingers for six days. Even if it's a paid expedited review, though that
obviously is a flawed suggestion.

------
drawkbox
Definitely a reason I have always paid for Gmail/Drive before it was that. But
the actual reason is quite scary why it triggered the issue:

"My data was intact save for the last thing I’d worked on–a spreadsheet
containing a client’s account numbers and passwords. It seems that Google’s
engineers determined this single document violated policy and locked down my
entire account. My request to get that document back is still pending."

So you can't keep files you need to secure in Drive? Blown away by this. And
the access to the entire ecosystem based on one document. This is not good.
With that logic if there is a DCMA request or problem with a video on youtube
the whole site should just shut down.

~~~
badideabear
I'm more appalled that he's storing his client's account passwords in a
spreadsheet. It's ridiculously easy to accidentally share the wrong doc with
the wrong people.

~~~
prostoalex
Isn't the deal with Google Docs that you can revoke that access a second after
you realize you made the mistake? Unlike, say, sending the doc as an
attachment?

------
DanBC
It would be nice if Google, when they threw you out, let you download a glob
of your data. That would make the thing a lot less painful for most people.

> _Google told me for the first time that it reserves the right to “terminate
> your account at any time, for any reason, with or without notice.”_

No one reads the ToS / AUP, but this shows why it's a problem. It was not the
first time Google told this guy; he was told in the legal documents that he
agreed to when he signed up.

Yes, Douglas Adams had it right.

> "But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for
> the last nine months."

> "Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them,
> yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call
> attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or
> anything."

> "But the plans were on display ..."

> "On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."

> "That's the display department."

> "With a flashlight."

> "Ah, well the lights had probably gone."

> "So had the stairs."

> "But look, you found the notice didn't you?"

> "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked
> filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying
> 'Beware of the Leopard'."

~~~
dhimes
At the very least they should tell you _exactly why._ To not do so is, at the
very least, extremely bad manners.

------
betterunix
People have been warned about relying on web services already:

[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-
really-s...](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-
serve.html)

~~~
baby
Alright but then how do you safely store your important data? Imagine if the
same thing happened with Dropbox (if you're using it).

~~~
marssaxman
I keep my data safe by storing it on hardware I control and never depending on
cloud-service providers.

~~~
greenlander
Any serious amount of data storage requires a hard drive (as opposed to
flash), and hard drives are quite fragile. If you drop one on a hard floor
it's probably done. And with time they fail for all kinds of other reasons.
They are mechanical devices.

~~~
marssaxman
I seem to have had better than average luck with hard drives; it's been about
20 years since I've had one die while I was still using it. In any case, yes,
I rely on a great big hard drive for backup, but it sits on the bottom shelf
of a large cabinet; it's not falling any distance onto anything.

What's more important is that I know exactly where it is and who has access to
it, and I will continue to have access to it as long as I keep on feeding it
electricity.

------
woodchuck64
It seems strange that Google wouldn't have a policy of issuing warnings,
escalating warnings, etc., before taking the drastic action of suspending an
account. Without knowing the exact reason this person's account was suspended,
for all we know it could be a complete glitch.

~~~
gscott
When you're God you can just send a flood and say "well I hope that person
built a boat".

(i.e that the person should have a copy of their data).

~~~
MichaelApproved
Even the god in the fable you're referencing gave Noah advance notice of the
flood.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Even the god in the fable you're referencing gave Noah advance notice of the
> flood.

Yeah, but it wasn't Noah's ToS violation that the god involved was addressing.

~~~
gscott
There was no TOS violation, just an algorithm gone wild.

This happens to me all the time but with Google adwords

\- Google Adwords tells me not to run more then one domain in an ad group then
suspends the ad group... that has only one ad in it. Takes a week for Google
to undo their suspension.

\- Google Adwords suspends an ad, support says that during the signup process
there should be a page that links to competitors with a comparison of prices
as features. Sort of like going to a K-Mart but once your at the checkout the
checker says "you shudda gone to Wal-Mart sucker!" (to save a dollar). Takes a
week for Google to undo their suspension.

etc and so on. If you spend 20k a month or more with Google adwords when
Google wants to give you pain they find very unusual ways to do it I presume
to mess with your click history to force you to pay more, so Google quarterly
profits go up. I presume this happens throughout Google's products.

------
devmach
For an individuals it's overkill buy at work we use something like this :

* We use Google/Gmail only for mail hosting, not for calender or cloud storage.

* Google apps with our domain.

* We have also an account at Yandex.

* DNS service from DynDNS, MX ttls set to 3600 seconds (1 hour, it could be less)

* For virtualization, we have a i7 machine with 2x1 TB disks (Raid-1).

* For webmail, calender, sharing etc we use Zimbra ( open source version ).

* Everyone has an internal email ( x@office.domain.com ) and external gmail account. Zimbra syncs itself with gmail.

* When somebody sends email , depending user, zimbra send it using gmail or relay.

* At 3 a.m. system automatically shut down Zimbra , takes backup on usb 3 hdd (~100Gb, arround 40 mins) and brings up it again( I know, there is a room for improvement, like rsyncing /opt/zimbra directory ). We change usb disks everyday or two and store other disk at somewhere outside the office.

So,

\- If Gmail "dumps" us, we can change our MX to Yandex, stuggle couple hours
and then continue to work.

\- If local server burns, users can continue to work using Gmail while we
build & install new one.

We tried rackspace email hosting but it had problems ( some mails doesn't
delivered, some incoming mails lost etc ). Fastmail was/is expensive comparing
current infrastructure and it could be viable if we have more than 30 persons.

P.S. : I'm not saying this solution is perfect or it's the only way to do, i'm
just sharing.

~~~
suhastech
Well, I actually wrote a simple email backup app called
<http://thehorcrux.com/> for individuals. It was my own personal itch.

</shamelessplug>

------
buro9
When G+ was announced I realised the implications were I to do anything on the
social side that risked the account... loss of access to email, calendar,
documents, etc that go back more than a decade.

I made a choice that day and I still stick to it:

I split my Google identity.

My original Gmail account is still in use and I use that for anything social,
for any settings and preferences... i.e. the non-essential stuff: Google+,
Chrome Sync, Android Play Store, and Google Currents.

A Google Apps account deals with anything that I care to keep and is on my
private domain: Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, and Drive.

I then used sync control in Android to turn off everything that each account
won't use. And in Manage Domain on the Google Apps I disabled G+ and anything
social.

For me it's a risk limitation exercise.

Should Google lock my Gmail, I lose things I don't care about. I keep backups
(Gmail offline + Grive) of my Google Apps domain, and should that get locked I
can change the DNS, setup my own email and restore the backup via IMAP.

I get to benefit from Google services without a large exposure to risk should
something happen.

------
mokash
I think we need a paid email provider, someone who's sole business is to
provide email services, and maybe a calendar. Someone who you can host your
own domain with and someone who's mission it is to ensure their customers have
privacy, security and can rely on their services. Someone who doesn't just
guarantee their services for as much as you pay for them but someone who is
willing to put their ass on the line to prove that they're a good provider.

Sure, you could just set up your own email server but why go through the
hassle? There's a real opportunity here, my mother doesn't know how to set up
her own email provider, neither does my aunt. A good email provider will make
it really easy to do everything related to email with advanced spam filtering
capabilities and will run a _very_ tight ship.

A man can dream.

~~~
Derbasti
Actually, getting a paid email account is easy. Just about every hosting
provider out there also offers an email address.

Web access is usually terrible though. If you're lucky, they provide
roundcube, which is ok, but certainly inferior to Gmail. If you use IMAP and
some desktop client, this might not be a problem.

The hard part is the calendar and contacts. I don't know of any CalDAV or
CardDav provider. Your best bet is probably some hosted Exchange solution,
which provides ActiveSync.

~~~
mokash
The biggest problem with web hosting providers' email services is the lack of
effective spam filters similar to Gmail's though.

------
jamesaguilar
Kinda sucks that Google makes type 1 errors occasionally. OTOH, you keep
sensitive data from your users in your personal gmail account and you're not
paying for support? You crazy.

~~~
wereHamster
It's not about sensitive data. It's about email, calendar, drive and other
google services you use and rely on for your daily work.

~~~
jamesaguilar
You should not rely on services you're not paying for and don't own for your
daily work. :-/

My point isn't about the nature of the data that was stored, my point was the
economic reliability of the tool being used to store it. In other words, you
want the provider to have some significant incentive not to screw you if your
livelihood depends on it.

~~~
coldtea
> _You should not rely on services you're not paying for_

Whereas you should rely on services you're paying for?

How are they different?

Terms of service even for paid services are BS anyway, and it's not like you
will sue them.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Because I believe P(service available to me | I'm paying for it) is higher
than P(service available to me | I'm not paying for it) for most services
where both are an option. I'm not going to go into all the reasons for that
belief. I'm sure you're a creative person and can guess some of them. Suffice
it to say that I think there is some reason to believe it. If you don't, by
all means run your important business processes off of charity-ware.

~~~
coldtea
Seems like a fallacy to me.

It's not as clear cut as the P vs P you make it be, anyway. In many cases
you're better of with Google that with some _small_ paying service your paying
$20/month to use, merely because Google has more money/people/tech to spend on
making the service better, avoiding to fall under, etc.

As for paying a _large_ company to their service, well, if you're like 0.001%
of the profits of the service you're paying for, you're not much of a customer
with influence, no matter how much you pay. And in most pay-for services you
are just that, a small decimal percentage of their business.

Now you could count on your interests aligned with the other customers (so
that they could not annoy you without annoying a large percentage of their
users) but there lots of cases where that's not the case.

~~~
jamesaguilar
I'm not sure what kind of fallacy it would be that I make decisions based on
my rationally derived probability estimates. If there is such a fallacy I
would love to hear about it.

~~~
coldtea
> _I'm not sure what kind of fallacy it would be that I make decisions based
> on my rationally derived probability estimates. If there is such a fallacy I
> would love to hear about it._

The fallacy that those are "rationally derived probability estimates" instead
of numbers pulled out of one's arse in the first place.

What gave you the impression that putting random intuition numbers on the
P(paid)/P(free) boxes makes it "rationally derived"?

If you didn't do that, what's your methodology, and where are the source
numbers of your empirical research one the matter?

~~~
jamesaguilar
> random intuition numbers

Are you talking about intuition numbers, or random numbers? They are
fundamentally different things.

Empirical research is not the only kind of rational evidence. See
<http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Evidence>

~~~
coldtea
> _Are you talking about intuition numbers, or random numbers? They are
> fundamentally different things._

Not if your intuition is based on random feelings and thoughts instead of
"empirical research".

~~~
lutusp
>> Are you talking about intuition numbers, or random numbers? They are
fundamentally different things.

> Not if your intuition is based on random feelings and thoughts instead of
> "empirical research".

Actually, "random feelings" and "random numbers" really are different things.
A random feeling occurs in the context of a particular individual's possible
spectrum of feelings, a small subset of all feelings. But by definition, a
specific random number must spring from an infinite set of random numbers to
meet the technical meaning of "random".

------
robomartin
Seriously, why does ANYONE use anything other than Google Search and
Analytics? Why do you willfully choose to expose yourself and your business to
what they can do to you? From the article:

"A few minutes into my Google-less existence, I realized how dependent I had
become. I couldn’t finish my work or my taxes, because my notes and expenses
were stored in Google Drive, and I didn’t know what else I should work on
because my Google calendar had disappeared. I couldn’t publicly gripe about
what I was going through, because my Blogger no longer existed. My Picasa
albums were gone. I’d lost my contacts and calling plan through Google Voice;
otherwise I would have called friends to cry."

And that list of losses can be expanded if you use other Google tools.

Personally, I just don't get it. I was using various forms of email before
Google even existed. I settled on Outlook and self-hosted email on Linux a
long time ago. Oh yes, MS Office for docs, calendars, etc.. Perfect? Nope. But
nobody can flip a switch and take it all away overnight.

I simply could not fathom running any of my businesses with this kind of daily
risk. Any one of your employees could trigger a Google account shutdown and
cost you dearly.

What's the problem here? Are MS license fees too expensive when compared to
loosing all of your data overnight?

As for the other non-MS Office services offered by Google, well, there are
tons of alternatives, free and paid.

I was lucky enough to learn this lesson about three years ago when a client's
account was shut down merely for moving about two hundred domains to a an
"AdSense for Domains" service they used to offer. Bam! Three days later their
entire account is shutdown, AdWords, AdSense, Gmail, Docs, everything. Wow.
New user too.

From that point forward I made a few decisions I have yet to violate:

    
    
      - Use Google Search if you must
      - Use Google Analytics if you must
      - Use Google AdWords if you must
      - Do not base a business on Google AdSense.  
        Your entire revenue stream could evaporate overnight.
      - Do NOT use ANY OTHER Google service, no matter how enticing or
        convenient it might be.  Consider what the cost to your business 
        might be if that new sparkling offering on the table 
        is pulled away without notice or recourse.  
      - Do not build a business on a foundation someone else has full control over.
    

So far, so good. Email, documents, backups and collaboration existed just fine
before Google was even an idea in someone's head. Don't be lured into
something that can kill your business and cause you personal financial damage.

If I were running an investment firm I would have a clause in my contracts
requiring that no business-critical services are to be hosted by Google on any
companies we'd invest on. Talk about playing with fire. Invest millions into a
venture and Google pulls their data backbone from right under them? Crap!
Screw that.

~~~
kybernetyk
Can you suggest a viable alternative to Google Mail? I'm feeling uncomfortable
having all my mail in Google's hands but haven't found an alternative yet.

~~~
oulipo
Start by simply backing up your emails regularly with BaGoMa

~~~
ableal
"BaGoMa - A script to Backup Google Mail."

<http://sourceforge.net/p/bagoma/home/BaGoMa/>

Thanks

------
josscrowcroft
_"Services I'd Pay For", May 2013 Edition:_

1) A hands-off, hassle-free service that connects to all your Google
'properties' and backs up everything every hour, on the hour, and allows easy
importing into a selection of similar replacement services if/when the
Googleplex smites me down.

2) See 1).

~~~
johnsbrayton
My Mac app, CloudPull, closely resembles that description. It runs in the
background on your Mac, backing up Gmail, Google Contacts, Google Calendar,
Google Drive, and Google Reader. It performs backups every hour, and keeps
snapshots for 90 days.

You can download CloudPull from: <http://www.goldenhillsoftware.com/>

CloudPull is free for a single account. For $9.99, you can upgrade to get
premium features including support for up to ten Google accounts.

John

~~~
mikro2nd
Any plans for a Linux port? Seriously, I'd love to pay you, but don't do
iAnything (and for much the same reasons that I don't trust Google with much
of anything these days.)

------
karussell
Probably the author would have been interested in an article which I didn't
finally publish ;) ... here are some (not always good ;)) Google alternatives

    
    
        Search: DuckDuckGo, Bing, Ask, Wolfram Alpha, Yandex, Baidu
            Scholar: TODO
            Patent:TODO
            Image: Bing
            Shopping/price compare:
        Photos (Picasa): Flickr, SmugMug
        YouTube: Vimeo
        News: Yahoo, TODO
        Mail: Yahoo, Hotmail, Thunderbird, Fastmail
        GDrive (storage): Spideroak, Dropbox,
        Documents: Microsoft, Zoho, OpenOffice
        Calendar: Zoho, Hotmail, AOL Calendar, 1Calendar, Outlook, Thunderbird, 30 boxes
        Chrome (Browser): Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chromium with Chromatic
        Google+: Facebook, Twitter, Identica, Diaspora, LinkedIn, Foursquare
        Maps
            routing: OSRM, Bing (=Yahoo), MapQuest, GraphHopper ;)
            local search: Yelp, Bing (no API!)
            mobile: TomTom
            Google Streetmaps/Earth: Bing 3D
        News: Netvibes (full of google search ;)), Yahoo, Twitter, breakingnews
            Reader: Netvibes, liferea (Linux only)
            Alerts: Netvibes
        Translation: Microsoft
        Analytics: Piwik
        AdWords: TODO
        Google Books: nothing found!?
        Google Sites: Wikispaces, Zoho
        Google Talk/Hangout: skype, talkyoo
        Blogs: Wordpress, tumblr
        Code: GitHub, SourceForge, BitBucket
        Groups: SourceForge
        Checkout/Wallet: TODO
        Google Apps: Amazon
        Speech Recognition: Nuance
        Google Voice: PhoneBooth
        Google TV: Apple TV, Samsung, LG, ...
        Chrome OS: it's Lubuntu!
        Smartphone (Android): iPhone, Nokia, BlackBerry, Ubuntu
        Play Store: Apple Store
            music: spotify, itunes
        Self-driving car: BMW, Audi, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Nissan, ...
    

Parts of those information through lifehacker

ToDos for Google: Offline routing, Own Games, Porn, Ebay, Amazon clone

------
gap
If you are an Android user, in this situation you also lose access to all the
apps that you bought from Google Play. Many developers only release their
software through Google's app store, and for paid apps you cannot make backup
copies of the APK, at least if your device isn't rooted, which it isn't for
most users. If you are an Android dev, please also make your app available
through other stores.

------
D9u
Of course the author preformed daily backups to removable media and other
cloud based services? Let this be a lesson. Data redundancy is important!

~~~
guard-of-terra
Is there a tool to backup your google everything?

If there isn't then what you're doing is called "taunting".

~~~
Samuel_Michon
You can download some of your Google data using Google Takeout. It’s far from
complete, but if you’re still using Google services, it doesn’t hurt to
download a backup once in a while.

The Data Liberation Front lists which services can be backed up, and how to do
it: <http://www.dataliberation.org/>

~~~
Lewisham
FWIW I believe Takeout does work when your account has been disabled, so that
you can transfer to another provider.

EDIT: Although sadly it looks like Gmail is _not_ part of Takeout :/

~~~
trhtrsh
Ever mail client written since ~1990 is capable of downloading your Gmail.

~~~
Lewisham
The problem is that if your account is disabled, it's unlikely you'll be able
to acces Gmail, IMAP or otherwise. I think Takeout has an exception so that it
works even when your account does not.

------
eksith
Lost count of how many times this was mentioned, but it bears repeating still
:

 _You don't own what you can't control._ Even if your name is on it, even if
you've given it to everyone, even if you use it on a million other accounts as
a means of access and an identity, you don't really _own_ it.

This is why, I still keep a contact@domain for professional work while saving
all my personal stuff on Gmail locally via POP.

The nice thing about HN (or the bad thing; depends on your perspective) is
that it doesn't need an email. I wish more watering holes were like that.
Alas, people are flaky with passwords and need resetting from time to time.

------
jfoster
If it was based on the content of a document in the Google Drive, it's
probably an automated rule. Clearly such an automated rule is going above and
beyond the minimum action by affecting the entire account rather than just the
document in question. Given that characteristic, I wonder if it might also
shutdown the account of anyone who the document is shared with. Could be quite
dangerous if it does. Documents can be added into someone's Google Drive just
by having them follow a link.

------
alexeston
I would really, sincerely, love to reply with my opinion on this, what seems
by the title at least, wonderful article. But unfortunately people do not seem
to have decent enough of a hosting provider and/or server to survive the
outcome of getting on the front page of HN and hence I am forced to see "Error
establishing a database connection".

~~~
frozenport
Back in the old days before VPS, websites would autoscale leading to huge and
unprecedented bills. For example, I hosted a website that contained download
links. One day the Chinese found out and hot-linking causing my server bill to
jump from $5.95 to over $200. I was 12 and this made me sad.

~~~
alexeston
I believe I was not around then. I started when the shared hosting was a
really popular thing with fixed bandwidth and even that could of easily
survived HN. So, I'm kind of amazed on why some sites can't handle that in
2013.

~~~
frozenport
When you exceed your limit they charge you a penalty.

~~~
alexeston
Yes, but at least here in Estonia the limit was more than enough (usually
500gb of bandwidth per month).

------
ubersync
I can't access the article. Can anyone tell shortly, what the author is
complaining about?

~~~
thomaslutz
Google closed his Google Account including Gmail, Google Drive, Google
Calender etc. without notice and without explanation. After 6 days he got it
back after a google employee he knows personally escalated the case
internally.

~~~
frozenport
And now that employee is paying the price with an embarrassing hacker news
article?

~~~
jacquesm
No, the employee comes out pretty good but google clearly sucks for anything
mission critical without a backup outside of google.

------
DanBC
I recently had a drive die on me.

Everything was backed up. My passwords were safely stored. But it was going to
take some time to get to them.

I did have my Google password, so I logged in. I was on a different computer,
a different OS, a different network. I was asked to enter my Google
Authenticator number, and then _BAMM_ I got access to everything.

I realised just how scary the Google 'Save passwords' thing is.

I trust Google, and I know they have smart people working on security.

We've seen similar where someone having their Google account hacked lost
access to everything.

This should be part of your back up / disaster planning. I guess there's a
niche for a single page check-list of what people should be storing 'just in
case'.

------
DigitalSea
If anyone has ever had to deal with an AdSense account suspension, this story
will hit close to heart. I find it alarming that Google suspended his account
over a spreadsheet which contained login details for a client (I do this for
managing my various domain and hosting accounts in Google Docs). While we
haven't heard the full story of what happened here, the fact they restored his
access proves he didn't do anything that really violated the TOC otherwise his
account access would not have been reinstated. Seems to me this is a case of
Google doing the wrong thing here, their lack of customer support is
frustrating.

------
hifier
I'm wondering if this is the mindset that most people have. The idea of
putting you're entire personal dataset (and work dataset?) into a free service
has always seemed terrifying to me. Especially one whose entire business model
is based on using that data to serve you ads! I keep local copies of
everything and backup daily. I don't trust anyone with such a complete picture
of my digital life. 'The cloud' is overrated, at least the free, ad supported
version is IMHO.

------
tannerc
Looks like we may start needing cloud services to backup cloud services.
That'd be an interesting service, particularly if it worked seamlessly in the
background.

~~~
TeMPOraL
All fine, until all the data ends up stored in the very same Amazon server
room, at which point in the event of server fire your "cloud backups" will
probably go down along with the original data.

~~~
trhtrsh
You are misunderstaning how cloud storage works. Amazon/Google data is stored
in 3-6 different disks, often in 2 or 3 different datacenters. If that data
were lost due to physical failures, you would have much larger worries, like
dust from a meteor blocking out the sun.

------
foobits
Uh?

So Google really closes accounts?!?

Wow...

But honestly, what the fuck are governments doing?

I mean, companies like Google, Facebook, Paypal etc. are de-facto monopolies
and should NOT be able to refuse service to anyone, much less ban existing
users!

In general, any company pulling such obvious "dick moves" needs punishment.

What's the point of having a government and a law system if it cannot even
enforce such basic stuff?

------
baby
Reading this was like reading a nightmare. I have all my life on my Gmail
account. All my plans on my Calendar. Important documents on Driver etc... I'm
way too dependent of Google. Same thing if iTunes Match or Dropbox dump me
tomorrow.

------
bloaf
Cloud storage doesn't count as a backup if it is the only place you've stored
your data.

~~~
aquadrop
Any storage doesn't count as a backup if it's the only place you've stored
your data.

------
magoon
Please don't keep sensitive client data in a spreadsheet on Google, or
DropBox. If you must store it in a cloud, at least encrypt it and store it in
a locally-encryptable service like JungleDisk.

------
jameskennemore
"Google’s engineers determined this single document violated policy and locked
down my entire account" -- meaning "no privacy for your documents."

------
imsofuture
What are the best alternatives to Gmail?

~~~
lignuist
Paying for managed Webspace that includes email functionality.

~~~
eropple
Who runs a remotely comparable e-mail service, though? I mean, I've tried
Windows Live, and that's the closest I've found and is still pretty poor.

~~~
lignuist
A comparable service leads to comparable problems.

------
bumbledraven
Protip: whenever an argument uses the word "unfettered", it's a warning sign
that the argument sucks.

------
stevewilhelm
If you are so dependent on GMail, pay the $50 per year for the Google Apps for
Business version.

------
RawData
I don't understand why no one has sued google over this... That would be my
first reaction...

~~~
SEMW
English law student here. This isn't legal advice.

Generally, in common law countries, if you're not paying Google for the
services, the legal system won't help you. Since you gave no consideration for
the services you got, there's no legal contract, so you can't even enforce
their own terms of service against them.

(In theory, an action in tort for negligent provision of services can succeed
against a provider you didn't pay - but in practice, that'd fail for a number
of reasons in this situation (in England anyway)).

As soon as you're paying for services, the whole thing changes. You've
suddenly got the contract law at your back, and with that comes whatever laws
govern unfair terms in consumer contracts, and the supply of services to
consumers, in your jurisdiction. You're in a _vastly_ better position,
legally.

~~~
RawData
Consideraion doesn't necessarily have to be money...

~~~
SEMW
I'm guessing you mean that having adverts shown to you might be good
consideration?

I guess it's possible that it might be held to be, but it's by no means a
given. (I don't know any English cases on that, but there may be US ones I'm
not familiar with. All the cases of website terms I know are ones where the
website owner wants to enforce against the user, so don't help, as AFAICS the
courts only care whether the party seeking to enforce gave consideration
(which they have: the service)).

But even if you succeed in that, it still might not help you. Seems to me that
the effect of that would be to make the service a standing offer on Google's
part. Analogy: a sign on a shack saying "Come in and take a biscuit if you
view the advert on the wall". The consideration isn't in return for a promise
to continue to provide services. If the shack owner removed the shack one day,
you couldn't sue him for breach of contract.

Wheras if you've paid money for a service and they don't provide it, they're
in breach, full stop. (Even if they claim you're in breach, they have to
notify you and give you a reasonable time to cure it).

IANAL, and my consideration analysis might be completely wrong. But even if it
is, I still strongly suspect it's not going to be easy to convince a court to
hold Google in breach for stopping giving you a service you weren't paying
for. If you're paying for a service, you're in a much more secure position.

~~~
RawData
If I offer to let you park your car in my garage for free, and then one day
lock the door and take your car...I'm not allowed to do that just because I
had been letting you park there for free. The car still belongs to you.

Likewise, google shouldnt be able to close a free account and keep all my
email, my stored files, etc. it's ludicrous.

Yet thats exactly what they do..time and again...and people just bend over and
take it.

------
capo
Same as every other “cloud provider”, yet somehow Google is the one subjected
to these overwritten accounts and the almost mandatory pseudo law/policy
musings that follow.

You might want to take a look at some policies from others in the industry to
get a more accurate picture of this landscape.

These policies are constructed as such to mitigate litigation, which the
author concedes. Regardless I'm glad this instance had a happy ending.

It’s also worth mentioning the the paid tier of Google Apps operates under
completely different TOS:
<http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/premier_terms.html>

~~~
svachalek
"Somehow"? What other "cloud provider" does John or Jane Q. Public use?

~~~
blantonl
I don't think his comment was focused on John or Jane Q Public, but rather the
general use of cloud services and the dangers of these types of events
happening.

For instance, I host most of my business on AWS. We recently had a compromised
server that delivered malware to some of our Web visitors resulting in Google
completely blacklisting our site, and ultimately resulting in AWS sending us a
threatening notification that we were violating their terms of service by
serving malware and we could be terminated at any time.

Within an hour of finding out the root cause we cleaned up the malware issue,
but we spent the next 24 hours trying to get Google to remove the blacklist
and kept our fingers crossed that AWS wouldn't just terminate all our 17+
instances and ask questions later - effectively putting us out of business.

Welcome to the cloud!

~~~
mattzito
This has always been the way it works with hosting providers and even
colocation facilities. You have an obligation to keep your infrastructure
healthy, or the provider has an obligation to shut you down before they get a
reputation for being malware/spam/badness-friendly and have to worry about
their peering relationships and the like.

Nothing new here because it's "the cloud".

------
fakeer
I don't know about Analytics, never used it.

But I strongly believe _search_ needs to be decentralized. Something like P2P.
I mean it's like basic healthcare rights (or right to live) on the Internet.
Without search most of the Internet is blocked for you and this _mostly_ lies
in a few corporate behemoths; no, I let me correct it - that's just one!

Or are there already services like that? I don't think DDG can simply read
from Google indexes and give us the results or maybe they can but it still is
dependent on indexes by Google which shuts accounts without notice and it's
gone for good if you don't know anyone inside or your story is picked up from
the Internet.

