

German court requires Google to stop ignoring customer emails - prohor
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2605999/legal/german-court-requires-google-to-stop-ignoring-customer-emails.html

======
Mithaldu
I'm german, i read the ruling, here's details picked out of the document while
reading through it. Feel free to ask if there's something that could be
double-checked for.

\- The suing party is a german group whose officially recognized reason for
existence is to protect customer rights.

\- If Google doesn't fix this, up to 250k€ per instance of violation (sadly
not clarified what instance means), or jail up to 6 months (sic) or jail up to
6 months. (Unclear how that is supposed to be done.)

\- Google has to pay 200€ + 5% interest, starting on 13.12.2013. (I don't know
over which timeframe this interest accrues.)

\- Google has to pay all process costs, as it's the losing party.

\- Google offers services which it runs as a business, either by reserving the
right to use customer data in a business manner (hangouts, docs, calendar) or
by advertising (search, do note that TV broadcasting for example is a business
with customers too).

\- Google is required to make it possible to reach individual personal contact
with a human employee at Google.

\- The court recognizes and has discussed with Google that the problems of
scale here are very real, but still insists on the fact that the current
solution is not acceptable.

\- The court even offers suggestions, such as providing multiple email
adresses in the impressum to aid in channeling.

\- Crucial to the court is that pointing at an online form is not enough,
especially since the pointing is done at a maze of help pages which may, or
may not, lead to an online form.

\- The court recognizes that the law does not specify how the company has to
communicate once person-to-person communication is established.

\- The court recognizes that "not answering" is also a valid reaction, if and
when a human employee has read/heard the request; BUT ONLY IF that kind of
answer is not the rule.

\- The court recognizes that efficient communication is not done by answering
quickly, but by answering in a reasonable time frame and with detail according
to the reasonable expectations of a user. (Thus implying that users may have
unreasonable expectations which need not be fulfilled.)

\- The court also recognizes that not all emails need to be read. The problem
is that none are read. Google may filter and channel emails as it likes, as
long as the system's goal is explicitly to enable communication via email; not
as it currently is, to deny communication.

------
yebyen
Wait, did you read this gem:

> Google can appeal the ruling. The company did not immediately reply to a
> request for comment.

------
jnbiche
>If Google does not change its conduct, it could be fined up to €250,000 about
US$323,000), the court said.

Hmm, personalized e-mail support for an entire nation, or US$323,000. Wonder
which one finance will recommend?

I mean, if you're going to fine private companies for non-misleading, non-
fraudulent behavior, then do it right like the US: $250,000 _per day_ of non-
compliance.

Better yet, just let the market take care of it. If people really dislike not
having e-mail support, they'll stop using Google. So far, it's pretty clear
that people value Google services more than they do personalized customer
support, since it's almost universally known that Google provides zero support
for free accounts, and limited support for even paid accounts.

~~~
currysausage
_> If people really dislike not having e-mail support, they'll stop using
Google._

When they are locked out of their account and first _realize_ that support is
non-existent? Happens all the time, happened to me once (no, I didn't forget
my password).

 _> since it's almost universally known that Google provides zero support for
free accounts_

Universally known among techies.

 _This doesn 't mean that every incoming email should now be checked and
processed individually by a Google employee, the court said. [...] It was left
up to Google how to deal with future incoming email._

So Google doesn't need to respond to "How do I change the color of my inbox?"
or "New design sucks!". But in case of serious trouble, a customer can expect
the possibility of contacting a human.

~~~
mseebach
So, they don't have to "check and process" each message, it's just that not
checking and processing each message and being honest about it is not OK? So
how much is enough?

~~~
onli
That is hard to say, but the article gives part of an possible answer.

It is obviously not enough to simply say "we don't read it". It thereby
follows that it it not ok to not have a channel of communication. This implies
that emails who are sent to the support address must have the option to be
responded to - if they are important enough. Because if they are all just
never answered, this is the same as not having a communication channel in the
first place.

My guess is that it has to be a ranking based on importance. Of course it is
necessary to answer each one, like "How do I find the google website". But it
might be that - in germany - things like having an account closed people
relied upon in good faith and than not responding to inquiries why is
problematic, given that this can high and monetary personal consequences
(violation of customer protection laws, to which all of this is referring -
and yes, this is not fully dependent on whether they pay. Imagine important
document stored only there - maybe created there, so it is not totally not
understandable not having a backup already - and then lost, thus causing a
million dollar company to fail. I'm exaggerating, but stuff like that).

Further, having an available contact channel is necessary to be able to submit
legal documents, though I expect that Google has another avenue for that
already.

------
marcus_holmes
But google users aren't customers. Just because I use google to search for
things doesn't make me a customer.

It doesn't say in the article, so does anyone know if the relevant German law
requires _free_ support? Can Google charge $500 per email to respond to user
email, for example?

~~~
rbehrends
(1) Google also offers other services, such as GMail and Google Docs.

(2) This is a requirement for anybody who offers services that are generally
provided for a fee, even if in this particular instance it is offered for free
(e.g. because it is financed through advertising or a freemium model). See §5
of the German Telemedia Act [1].

[1]
[http://www.cgerli.org/fileadmin/user_upload/interne_Dokument...](http://www.cgerli.org/fileadmin/user_upload/interne_Dokumente/Legislation/Telemedia_Act__TMA_.pdf)

~~~
readerrrr
_Service providers must render the following information easily, directly and
permanently accessible for telemedia which are offered commercially, generally
in return for a FEE:_

 _2\. details which permit rapid electronic contact and direct communication
with them, including the electronic mail address_

( fee is emphasized by me )

I would argue that free services do not fall under this rule.

~~~
rbehrends
Sorry, but both the case law and the legislative intent are pretty clear on
that. Even free services fall under this rule if the type of service is
_generally_ provided for a fee, even if the specific service is free. The
section is a fairly direct implementation of article 5 of EU Directive
2000/31/EC.

~~~
readerrrr
EU directive is much clearer on the subject.

 _(c) the details of the service provider, including his electronic mail
address, which allow him to be contacted rapidly and communicated with in a
direct and effective manner;_

Replying with an automated answer saying that actual human response is not an
option, is certainly not direct and effective.

------
jacquesm
In Germany, at the bottom of almost every website there is this thing called
the 'impressum link', (example:
[http://www.spiegel.de/impressum/a-941280.html](http://www.spiegel.de/impressum/a-941280.html)
), where the party operating the website lists their address of business and
ways to contact them.

This is a requirement for doing business online in Germany.

~~~
patrickaljord
And did the people who passed this law thought of businesses who have millions
of visits per second and what the consequences of replying to every single
email would cost to the company and society? Seems like Germany have some
really backward laws when it comes to the web, starting with all their spying
laws and making Google Street View close to illegal.

~~~
Tomte
Nobody demands that even a single mail must be replied to.

Do the people who make such outraged, generalised and sweeping statements
online think of the consequences, i.e. that they look foolish?

~~~
Tomte
Page 11 of the ruling:

"Es kann auch hiernach nicht Aufgabe des TMG sein, eine Antwort oder eine
bestimmte Qualität der Antwort zu erzwingen. Es genügt die abstrakte
Möglichkeit, dass Kommunikation aufgenommen wird, eine Reaktion erfolgt. Auch
ein Nichtantworten kann eine Reaktion sein. Wenn aber Nichtantworten Prinzip
ist, kann nicht mehr von Kommunikation die Rede sein."

translated by me:

"Hereafter it cannot be the function of the TMG to force a reply or a certain
quality of the reply. The abstract possibility that communication is started,
a reaction happens, suffices. A nonreply can be a reaction, as well. But if
not replying is the principle, one cannot speak of communication anymore."

~~~
jacquesm
That was exactly my reading, thank you for the translation.

The 'categoric rejection' was the problem, not the lack of a specific answer.

------
junto
While I'm not sure who's side I'm on here yet, it struck me that it is
extremely hard to define a Google "customer".

I assume one has to pay monies to a company to make themselves a customer. I
doubt even 2% of Google users actually pay.

~~~
trias
The law in question is not intended regulate business-customer-relations, but
is also for business-business of business-press-relation or any other form of
contact.

If you operate a business in germany and have a website you have to have an
"impressum". Even most personal sites put up an "impressum" even if they are
not required too, just because everyone is scared of the "impressumspflicht".

~~~
junto
Interesting. Thanks for sharing that.

------
mrweasel
What if Google had no offices in Germany? Would these rules still apply?
Otherwise the rules would apply to every single company with a website, which
seems extreme, especially if you don't do business in Germany.

It would make more sense if the rule just applied to paying customer and not
random users.

~~~
Tomte
It applies to every web site that targets Germans.

~~~
patrickaljord
But Germany is part of the EU, an open and free market that allows to sell
from other countries of the EU such as Ireland to say Spain. This is probably
what's going to happen if the German gov keeps harassing Google as a cash cow.

~~~
jacquesm
They are most definitely not harassing Google as a cash cow. They are telling
google that they do not get to live by different rules than other businesses
operating in Germany and so they should answer their mail. Categorically not
_reading_ your mail is not an option for a business.

~~~
patrickaljord
It's not the first time Germany is harassing Google, I remember the google
street view thing and more. There are probably tons of companies not answering
their email but they are targeting Google only because cash cow. So yeah,
harassing in that sense. They're not the only country harassing a successful
company to squeeze cash out of them, but Germany (and France) seems to have a
sweet spot for Google.

~~~
jacquesm
High trees catch a lot of wind. I personally far prefer they target the big
companies which can easily afford to defend themselves if they feel they are
wrongly targeted than the little guys which could be wrecked by such a
lawsuit.

So no, Google is not targeted because they are a cashcow, Google is targeted
because they are large and ignore a bunch of law because they think they can
get away with it because they are large. The simpler thing would be to simply
comply with the law but they choose the confrontational road and rulings like
these are the result.

Companies are still not larger than nation states. Maybe one day they will be
but for now the nation states seem to have the upper hand when it comes to
enforcement.

~~~
gizmo686
Based on wikipedia [1] Panama, the 89th highest gdp country (out of 193), has
a gdp of $36 billion. Google has a gross annual profit of $38 billion [2] [1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(nominal\))
[2]
[http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Google_(GOOG)/Data/Gross_Prof...](http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Google_\(GOOG\)/Data/Gross_Profit)

~~~
jacquesm
Germany however is still two orders of magnitude away from parity with Google.
And you'd probably have to see that $36B relative to the amount google makes
in Germany. And then I doubt Google is larger than even Somalia.

------
spindritf
_companies must provide a way to ensure fast electronic communications with
them_

Of course, that's just common sense. How can you run a company and not respond
to people who contact you? Can anyone really object to this requirement?
Obviously, a generated response does not fulfil it. You should be able to talk
to a human.

Repeat that reasoning 1000 times and it becomes much clearer why Europe is
being dwarfed economically by the US [http://cdn.static-
economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecac...](http://cdn.static-
economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/290-width/images/print-
edition/20120728_FBC674.png)

~~~
jacquesm
> Repeat that reasoning 1000 times and it becomes much clearer why Europe is
> being dwarfed economically by the US

What a ridiculous way to compare the size of economies. Dwarfed means to me to
be substantially larger. But in actual fact it's going neck-and-neck:

[http://useconomy.about.com/od/grossdomesticproduct/p/largest...](http://useconomy.about.com/od/grossdomesticproduct/p/largest_economy.htm)

Number of large companies founded is not a relevant metric if you want to
compare the economies of continent sized entities.

~~~
spindritf
It's a reasonable way to compare successfulness. It's how Americans ended up
providing us with search, phones, operating systems... pretty much all tech.
Google dominates EU markets even more than it dominates at home.

All that seemingly sensible regulation is exactly how we keep reducing
ourselves to playing catch-up and not even very well.
[http://online.wsj.com/articles/galileo-satellites-
launched-i...](http://online.wsj.com/articles/galileo-satellites-launched-
into-wrong-orbits-1408827462)

~~~
jacquesm
> pretty much all tech.

That's so incredibly off-base that I don't know where to start with the
corrections. What you mean is 'the few large multinationals that dominate a
few very visible segments'.

You could (wrongly) turn that around just as easily and point to the WWW
created in Switzerland (on a network stack created in the US), that Linus
Torvalds is Finnish by birth and that his creation powers all those phones and
that search engine (he's moved to the united states now) and so on.

The world is a lot more interconnected and if the US economy goes down so does
the EU and vice versa.

There is no 'individual success' any more than there will be 'individual
failure'.

Facebook and Google are outliers from SV, by your standards the rest of the US
should feel about as miserable as the EU.

Where are all the great start-ups from Northern Michigan, from New York, from
Washington DC?

Sure there will be exceptions but they're not facebook or google or Apple for
that matter.

But neither are any of those BMW, Mercedes or VW. Nor are they TomTom (nl),
Logitech (ch), nor Tata Steel (Indian, the world is larger than just the US or
the EU).

Economies are no longer disconnected and EU and US per-capita size of their
respective economies is very comparable.

It's just that in the US the economic output (and the wealth distribution) is
less even and so you notice the outliers. If you cut California out there
would be a severe imbalance.

There are three major reasons web start-ups from the US have an easier time
going to Europe than the other way around: Access to capital, a very large
homebase speaking for the most part one language, and Europeans adapting
easier to using English than US users adapting to using a website in a
different language than their mother tongue.

Copycats like the Samwer brothers capitalize handily on the discrepancy during
the short window of opportunity between a successful launch of something
States-side and the subsequent roll out to the rest of the world. And for the
local hold-outs who do not wish to conduct business in a language not their
own.

~~~
spindritf
There's a lot of great thinking done here, yet rarely capitalized. My point is
not that something in the water lowers IQs but rather that well-intentioned,
seemingly sensible, common sense regulation is drowning entrepreneurs. Even
Linus Torvalds left to run Linux, a non profit, from the US.

 _BMW, Mercedes or VW_

Founded, respectively, in 1916, 1926, and 1937. Those are some great companies
but from completely different times. Neither Saint Peter's Basilica nor the
Colosseum tell you much about modern Italy. Those are vestiges of glorious
(well, usually) past.

Facebook, Google, Microsoft are outliers from among American startups and
typical by being American. Luckily, the world is interconnected so we can buy
their products.

~~~
jacquesm
Tom Tom was founded in very recent history, the WWW is of the last 3 decades
and now powers a substantial amount of the world economy in one way or another
(would you have preferred to buy access from a single huge American company,
say AOL?), and Team Viewer (which you've probably never even heard of) was a
German company until they exited for $1B+.

Really, there is a ton going on in Europe, but it just isn't as much cult-of-
personality oriented in as in the US, nor does it typically become a world
wide brand. Things are slower, but just different, not worse.

And if they would be worse then those per-capita-gdp's would be quite
different.

Another way to look at it is gdp per man/woman hour worked. And on that scale
Europe comes out ahead. You can compare these two until the cows come home, in
the end the differences are much smaller than the similarities.

SV is an outlier for the world, not just for the US.

~~~
spindritf
_the WWW is of the last 3 decades and now powers a substantial amount of the
world economy in one way or another_

But it didn't happen here. Great invention and then nothing. Even something as
simple as Geocities took off in the US.

And TomTom is like 1/60th of Google. This whole company exemplifying European
IT success is a side gig for Google.

In GDP per hour worked the US also trumps pretty much every European country.
Europe as a whole doesn't come close, not to mention ahead.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PP...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_hour_worked)

~~~
jacquesm
> Great invention and then nothing.

Right. What a pity that that WWW thing went nowhere.

~~~
spindritf
That's completely not what I wrote. What I said is that even though the
invention was European and wildly successful, it was Americans who capitalized
on it with Geocities, Yahoos, Mosaic, Netscape... It was developed in the US,
and piles of money were made in the US.

And anyway, by your chosen measure EU is clearly doing worse, right?

------
transpy
I don't understand why a technological country like Germany poses so many
obstacles to American IT companies. It could be that Germany is sincerely
concerned about the limitations that need to be imposed against e.g. Google,
so that it doesn't get too powerful, or maybe Germans are just jealous that
they aren't really thriving in IT.

~~~
Mithaldu
What you interpret as attacks on companies, is seen by germans as defense of
real and individual people.

We have a lot of institutions that would make americans shiver in fright, but
give us germans a nice warm feeling because we know that there's someone
actually looking out for us.

We have a nationally recognized group for the protection of customers. We have
a group for the protection of children from bad influences in media, like hate
speech or glorification of violence. We have a government office for the
protection of the unemployed, which makes it possible for them to continue
living a dignified life and helps them reintegrate into the working community.
We have strong laws protecting employees from capricious acts by employers. We
have a state program to protect the elderly when they cannot work to support
themselves anymore, by enabling them to live a dignified life. We have state
health insurance and laws in place to ensure that a german citizen would have
to actively break the law to not be protected by affordable health insurance.
Just to name a few.

All of this protects every one of us and means that we're free to help and aid
one another without having to worry about giving too much or empowering a
potential adversary. It also increases everyone's quality of life; for example
education is at a comparably high level for everyone, and we don't have cities
who need to think hard about homeless, because we don't have epidemics of
homeless.

We don't care about having giant IT companies which could buy small countries.
We're glad to have everyone have a good chance at a decent life.

~~~
transpy
Ok then, in that case it's sincere concern about the well-being of it's
citizens. Some of the things you mention are laudable (unemployment insurance)
while other are questionable, nanny-state measures (protect children from bad
influences), and other don't seem to be working (hate speech is rampant in
Germany). I don't think protecting citizens against bad e-mail service counts
as a critical protection measure, it rather falls into the nanny-state
measures category and comes across as technologically backwards.

~~~
Mithaldu
I don't think you'll ever see this, but have an answer nonetheless: You're
jumping to conclusions a bit.

> nanny-state measures (protect children from bad influences)

Putting age labels on things is all fine and good, but if kids can go to any
store and legally buy things like the Doom series, or Manhunt, without
requiring their parents, then that's a bit of a farce. All germany has done in
that respect is to force stores to actually check ages, and not publicly
advertise things with certain contents. Adults can still get anything they
like, and give it to their children if they feel like it.

> and other don't seem to be working (hate speech is rampant in Germany)

Honestly curious, how so? I won't deny we still have some bad elements, and
every one in a while (once a year or so) a politician may say a dumb thing and
get lambasted to hell and back; but i don't think we have anything comparing
to the outright white power hitler fetishist groups in the usa, or Glenn Beck,
or Westboro Church.

> I don't think protecting citizens against bad e-mail service counts as a
> critical protection measure

You seem to have misunderstood. Citizens aren't being protected against "bad
email service". Citizens are being protected against a being entirely blocked
out of ever reaching human contact when they have legit grievances against a
company doing business with them. Read the very top post where the court's
stance is explained.

