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>all present themselves as basic infrastructure services, with an implied expectation

you seems to take a mental image created in your head by marketing for a contract fine print.

>Ethically speaking, all services should be doing due diligence when reassigning usernames.

Ethically thinking God shouldn't have created the human race, at least he shouldn't have released such a buggy early alpha version.




> you seems to take a mental image created in your head by marketing for a contract fine print.

Representations given to a user ("marketing") can constitute an implied contract, or at least a cause of action if they aren't fulfilled. It'd be one thing if Google said up front that their service should be considered unreliable, and may be discontinued at any time, or user accounts even arbitrarily given to third parties. But if they claim otherwise up front, that can be at least somewhat legally binding. Not sure how a court case would turn out, but they aren't automatically in the clear.




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