Lots of people like and use Google. For me, I've moved away from their services for email and communication. Their tendency to launch a new project with tremendous momentum and support only to suddenly and without warning cancel the whole project (looking at you Google Wave) combined with their Orwellian level of control over the internet as a whole was the one-two punch that put me off entirely.
The duopoly of having Apple and Google control the entire mobile universe is gut wrenching. This developer is now unable to develop for millions of phones based on an algorithm deciding they were a bad actor and Google likely won't be compelled to care, a drop in the vast ocean of their concerns.
There aren't any alternatives for commercial or monetary apps. I've taken to using finds on f-droid for mission critical mobile applications but that's just not viable for most people.
i moved to mailinabox last year and it has been great. i can only encourage more people to try self hosting stuff and start from the simplest of things.
No OP, but I’m using mailinabox on a linode vps for $5/month. The IP is in a range that doesn’t typically get marked as spam by default, and there are several checkers in place on the admin console to make sure that you’re dotting all of your “i”s and crossing all of your “t”s, from MTA-STS to DNSSEC. I do still run into problems from time to time, but it’s very rare these days.
Mailgun and others also have a free tier for relaying smaller numbers of email.
I've configured Postfix to use it for fallback if I can't deliver directly.
I use Digital Ocean and seem to struggle a bit delivering directly. 60 emails this month had to be delivered through mailgun since direct failed. Their free tier is up to 1250 emails per month.
Is there a documented reason to believe that DNSSEC is important, or really even at all influential, with deliverability? Most email origins, even the ones doing their own hosting, aren't DNSSEC-signed; if DNSSEC was a deliverability signal, most domains would be having problems.
Currently hosting at home, but tossing up whether it would be better off on a VPS.
I'm not currently getting blocked by Google or Microsoft, and maybe that's because it's hosted via my home connection (and therefore not within a set of known untrustworthy IP addresses), but Mailu has an easy path to ensuring SPF and DKIM are setup, which add legitimacy to the email domain.
I've been testing with a domain name that I haven't used for email before, so it's a clean slate, though I'm not sure how much difference that makes in getting blocked or not.
Fellow mailinabox user here. I love how their system “just works”, and wish there was more support for getting mail servers back in the hands of the masses.
Something that I very much enjoy is that mailinabox comes with nextcloud installed, which it uses for its exchange activesync calendar. I can sync everything from my keepass database to contacts and reminders to my mailinabox across devices.
To be honest, Wave didn't have any momentum at all, it was dead mere weeks after release. No one cared. Besides marketing-avid people. They try to keep their business a startup, and that's ok.
Likewise, you won't blame Clubhouse for closing their product.
But Google did close some very used products, with tons of momentum, among my favorite are Picasa and Reader.
> Wave didn't have any momentum at all, it was dead mere weeks after release.
That's what happens when you make a collaborative tool invite only and severely limited the number of invites you can send out. What a truly bizarre choice.
GMail is not a closed platform like Wave was, though. In fact, it's one of the few tools Google offer that's designed to let you communicate with people who aren't on a Google platform.
For me the red line was when it became clear that Google was going to start taking a more active political role some time around 2017.
I don't see how anyone can trust them to control more than one out of email/search data/phone operating system/online identity. They're an ad-funded media company - there is not a track record of high standards in this space once people start flexing editorial muscle. And taking the chance of losing access to multiple fairly important communication channels at once is just needless risk. They're too big to trust.
> The duopoly of having Apple and Google control the entire mobile universe is gut wrenching. This developer is now unable to develop for millions of phones based on an algorithm deciding they were a bad actor and Google likely won't be compelled to care, a drop in the vast ocean of their concerns.
Not surprising. A duopoly is little better than a monopoly. This is why we needed other viable platforms - which we had in Blackberry and Windows Phone - but didn't support them enough so we lost them. And here we are, caught between Apple and Google.
In some ways a duopoly is worse. In a monopoly the government will generally force the actor to behave. In a duopoly the actors can point at each other and say the end user has a choice, even when actors behaviour is the same.
I've been working on a Chrome extension for a few years now.
I just embarked on it full time when i got a message from google saying it would be removed as it was in violation of one of their policies. It wasn't, so i appealed — then they said it was in violation of a different policy. Again it wasn't so I appealed. Eventually I got to keep it on the chrome store — without making any changes.
Although I got to keep the extension on the store, because of this interaction I've decided to abandon the project. My plan was to build it to be cross platform. But it's just not worth the effort when Google or Apple can just pull the rug from under you.
Usually when you read a “Big Tech company mistreated me and won’t respond” article like this, you’ll identify one or more things the author did wrong and realize the story isn’t as one-sided as the headline would suggest. But this case is as clear as can be: Andrey followed the rules and lost everything, while Google broke their own and failed to offer any kind of meaningful support.
> Usually when you read a “Big Tech company mistreated me and won’t respond” article like this, you’ll identify one or more things the author did wrong and realize the story isn’t as one-sided as the headline would suggest.
I'm not convinced that's "usually" the case, but even when it is, it's still almost always the equivalent of being sentenced to death for jaywalking.
> But this case is as clear as can be: Andrey followed the rules and lost everything, while Google broke their own and failed to offer any kind of meaningful support.
I always give the user the benefit of any doubts when it comes to Google or any other company that uses "AI" support. I don't care if the user did it to themselves, a person at the company should be able and willing to fix it.
> To cut a long story short — due to moving to another country, I wanted to update my developer account to follow all the rules related to taxes in that country, but with Google, it’s not so easy, you can’t change the country for an existing payment profile (and also create a new payment profile), you need to create a new Google account, then pay for a new developer account and only then create a new payment profile and transfer your app to that new account.
These don't seem like the right steps. You can definitely have multiple payments profiles for one account, including from different countries (I do). There's no need to create a second account.
The instructions the author links to aren't suggesting creating a new account either.
I've moved my email and calendar off Google, stakes are just too fucking high. Also ditched Chrome for trusty Firefox. The only reason I have a Google account is just for Android and Youtube
Firefox is not trusty. Having your email and calendar on Google is not a risk as long as you sync them so if something happens to your accounts that you can move them to another provider.
> Having your email and calendar on Google is not a risk as long as you sync them so if something happens to your accounts that you can move them to another provider.
No, that’s not true. In the case where google shuts down your email, you will lose every email sent to that account after the shut down, and you’ll need to find everything and everyone that might send email to youraccount@gmail.com. This is why having a separate domain is super important, you could switch the MX records with minimal interruption.
Yeah, I didn't say you shouldn't use your own custom domain I just said using Google for email isn't a huge issue. I suggest an anonymous email service for this reason while using a custom domain. Doesn't matter if they shutdown one email, you can just create a new one and change where the forwarding email in your relay.
That is like the highest risk I can think of. Losing future emails that are sent to that email, losing all connected accounts, losing access to services/websites they decide to send a confirmation mail
That is why you should add a custom domain. You have the same lockout issue with Outlook, ProtonMail, or any email service where you don't own the domain.
I misunderstood you then, "having your mail on google and syncing them" sounds like you still have a @gmail.com but taking backups. Having your own domain is indeed the safest, I do that actually
Yeah, the question is whether google makes sense as a mail provided once you've decided that you needed to pay because of that feature.
If you're a company and don't want to manually handle email provisioning? Sure, why not. If you're an individual, Google isn't great. You could have a decent feature set along with great customer support elsewhere.
Is office not free? I much prefer office online to Google docs but we have to use google docs at work :( though the collab feature is much better in Google docs.
Not just Docs, it's Google Drive that I find hard to replace (Docs, Sheets, Draw, Slide, etc). The recent debacle with Legacy GSuite motivated me to pay for a Microsoft 365 account, and create a sync of my Google Drive to OneDrive, converting the proprietary Google format into Office format. Then I do a 3-2-1 backup of the OneDrive files. (Backing up the local Google Drive folder is no good, because all you get is a stub of the Google proprietary files.)
Then I moved most of my other Google services (e.g. Domains, Gmail, Calendar, Search, Chrome) off to other companies and products (e.g. Cloudflare, Fastmail, DDG, Firefox). I figure that every interaction with Google proportionally increases the probability that my account will be terminated. So I moved off Google to protect my Google Drive, which seems ironic.
The last Google service that I need to move off is Google Voice. I haven't done a lot of research on this yet. If anyone knows of a good alternative that provides SMS-to-email forwarding, I'd be interested.
At least with office 365 you can save to older, less apt to be excluded from formats like doc. Personally I save everything in the old doc/xls/ppt formats. I hope they keep them around for a while. Mostly these days though I just have a server at home that I can vnc into and use openoffice. All that stuff gets backed up to backblaze. it's not as nice as google or office365 but it's mine and I control it and I won't be revoking my account on an AI whim.
Why do you still use the non X office formats? They're far easier for other office suites to read as their not just a memory dump of internal office structures.
Just bite the bullet and accept that any free replacement you do find is also going to have its downsides. Decent stuff costs money to develop and maintain, if you're not paying then you're doing a deal with a devil somewhere along the line.
The issue is price structure. Github and Dropbox are great examples where I can be a Pro user and invite free users to collaborate, and it works great.
What we're seeing is a trend towards pay per seat with extremely limited guest capabilities if they exist at all. That's generally okay for businesses where $20/user/month is a rounding error on salaries. It just doesn't work for personal use.
I moved my work domain off Google, too, and Calendar has been a huge hassle. It keeps eating invites from other people using Google Calendar unless they explicitly opt to send an email invitation.
I did the same after I wanted to play around with an old Pixel phone and install a different OS on it. I realized I wasn't doing it because I was terrified of Google shutting down my account. I had email, photos, contacts, calendars, even TV and cell service with them that could be taken away at a moment's notice. That's just way too much in the hands of a highly automated company.
Now it's down to YouTube, and if Google wants to shut that down, I can live with it.
Is there a good alternative for Google Voice? As in, a phone number that rings multiple phones, can work with SIP phones, and that shows up with a good reputation as a standard phone number?
I haven't been in love with GVoice since I degoogled my designated "mobile phone" (I've just been limping along without being able to respond to texts on the go), but haven't taken the leap to Voip.ms or Flowroute, due to the reputation problem (eg many banks' snake oil authentications reject "voip" numbers).
My tentative plan is to move my main longstanding "main number" to one of those VOIP providers, and move snake oil auths to either the SIM card in my "mobile phone", a separate SIM on a fixed cell modem, or perhaps just a new GVoice number (which only needs to receive, so interop is easy by forwarding to email).
Can you state what these problems are? I have voip.ms but haven't actually used it as my primary number for awhile. They have SMS (using their custom app) and VoiP using SIP. Its too bad native SIP support in android (google pixel) wasn't that great for me which is why i stopped using it
1. Numbers don't work for banks' snake oil auth, craigslist account signup, etc. Either silently fails or says the number cannot be used.
2. Calls (to an iPhone, at least) where the number isn't already in address book show up as "Spam Risk" rather than the phone number.
3. Have had some people unable to text a voip.ms number, eg from Comcast mobile.
I'm not trying to hate on them or anything. I'm a happy customer for what they are. I just think these are limitations of all consumer-facing libre-protocol VOIP services, that GVoice manages to sidestep due to Fi, but I'd love to be wrong.
FWIW I've found the Voip.ms Android SMS app a bit flaky.
I may have seen that thread, and it probably gave me the idea for my second option. Still, I've got to wonder about the relative hassle-insecurity of a cheap MVNO versus GVoice. Like sure Google has a bad rep, but at least they've got good common-case security properties. Whereas a lowest bidder MVNO is likely to have poor security to begin with, and poor customer service for cleaning up after the fact. It might still be worth it to try a GVoice number first for every service, then fall back to the mule. (although everpresent point against Google: they're better at exploiting surveillance data, in a way that an MVNO won't be)
"all of these phones" implies you have expanded to multiple mules? I presume for multiple accounts at the same service? Is there any indication that really works for eg making it so all your Google accounts don't get locked at once? Or are you doing it to undermine the use of phone numbers for cross-service surveillance association?
FWIW I haven't looked in a while, but the cheapest US consumer SIM I've found is H2O Wireless (on AT&T) at $10 per 3 months.
Imagine how nice it would be to just have an "YouTube account", that is not related/connected to any other Google Services. Now that I think about it, why would I even want to use the same account for Email, YouTube and Analytics? It would make a lot more sense for them to be completely separate.
When people say they move off gmail
because the stakes are too high, I've kind of bought into that line -- the stakes are very high in terms of having e-mail be the main way recover all sorts of other accounts. But then I've tried to get myself to switch email providers and it doesn't actually make any sense to me.
Do I really believe, say, protonmail is less likely to screw me than gmail? Why?
What are the actual odds of gmail screwing me? They're huge, a few horror stories don't indicate much. And protonmail is small, the fact that I haven't heard horror stories doesn't mean much. (Not trying to pick on protonmail specifically, I think this all applies to any other provider I've seen suggested.)
Maybe the alternatives are in fact less likely to screw me due to some bullshit reason, I don't know. But I'm pretty sure with most other providers I'm more likely to get screwed for a technical reason, or because the company goes under, or because the company changes hands, or, if it's a paid service, because I fail to pay for some reason and the service doesn't degrade to free nicely.
I think switching to hotmail might make sense. They're a similar size to gmail, but I haven't heard the horror stories. And they're similar in all the other ways, unlikely to have a major technical problem, unlikely to change hands or go under, and I can't forget to pay them because it's free.
I'm just not convinced there's other better alternatives. If the stakes are too high the solution is probably just to make the stakes less high.
For me, it's less about Gmail as a service and more about Google as an ecosystem. They won't just mess up your Gmail, but also your YouTube, Stadia, Photos, Gvoice, and many, many more.
If Proton screws up, you just lost your email, not your entire digital life.
isn't hotmail dead? I thought microsoft bought msn and hotmail. Isn't it now @outlook.com email domains and no new hotmail accounts? I have some family members that have hotmail addresses but thats due to legacy support.
The MS in MSN stands for Microsoft, launched by Microsoft in 1995. Microsoft did indeed buy Hotmail.. in 1997 before google was even founded (1998). They have mostly retired the email addresses (you can instead get @outlook.TLD or @live.TLD addresses) but as you say, some have managed to maintain them for legacy reasons.
I guess the main thing is not so much to move off gmail or that protonmail is better, but to not have your email be dependent on Gmail.
Ie dont be joe.bloggs@gmail.com or have anything important tied to that account but rather have a Joe@bloggs.com email that you can use with any provider ... But most importantly move to a new provider in the event of problems without losing access to any of your 3rd party accounts tied to your email
> Do I really believe, say, protonmail is less likely to screw me than gmail? Why?
Yes, I do believe that <any email provider I pay> is less likely to screw me than gmail.
The reason is that Google ties things everything together--even if you created multiple accounts. So, if some Google Play AI algorithm decides that my login is compromised, everything can get shut down. If I post something on YouTube that the Googleplex AI doesn't like, everything can get shut down.
Random email provider isn't going to suspend my email account because the YouTube AI got pissy.
For decades, a foundational principle requiring frequent reminders was, ALWAYS back up your work. We have another just like it these days: NEVER rely on Google.
It's not even a matter of having his work backed up. He still has the code. He no longer has access to the entire Google ecosystem and there is absolutely no other viable alternative for mobile.
Sadly its cases like these that reinforce basic life concepts. Does developing Android apps really hold enough value for someone to wrap their entire livelihoods around? I realize people can make big money doing this, but is this really something worthwhile spending your life doing? Maby from an ecosystem standpoint it's no different than developing on some other environment. But the Google pool is simply too small to put years of your life into something that can be canceled at the drop of a hat by an uncaring robotic overlord. Or maby I'm making too big of a deal out of it, maby this was just a side-project that only received 10 hours a week of their time. It still sucks as it was a fun passion project. The same question rises up though. If you are making money with a project, try to not to give too much value away to the landlord. If one landlord can with a single robotic keystroke wipe you out rethink what you are doing from the ground up.
It's not dissimilar from others in the FAANG ecosystem. Someone that's all in on Apple: uses Apple Pay, @mac.com email, etc. They change the credit card they have tied to Apple pay, some mistake happens, and then a month later they lose access to their email and other majorly important services they rely on. Very inconvenient, if it happens when you are traveling abroad you could be screwed pretty bad. People are learning slowly: never keep all your technology eggs in one landlords basket. Some day, some how, you will make a mistake. Whether it's your fault or not, or you expressed an unpopular opinion, your project/livelihood/life/etc. will get deactivated with no remorse.
I agree with you, I could never bring myself to invest my own livelihood into these walled garden ecosystems where you're a digital serf beholden to an overlord who can take your years of effort whenever they want.
Open web is where it's at, and windows application though even windows is starting to get locked down and having other problems.
Google is the same as: Here is some free co-working space that you can set up your office in; lots of tools and free coffee. But no contracts either way.
Maybe a good place to set up and get started, but always think that it could be boarded up tomorrow.
When the hell is Google going to realise the irreparable damage stories like this are doing to their brand? You want to challenge AWS & Azure in the cloud? Then fix this ASAP. Allow additional appeals; no automated bans; provide human responses. Honestly, it isn't that hard.
I wish every damn company would stop requiring an email and phone number for signups... I probably have hundreds of account using my gmail address and many probably don't even allow you to change it.
I won't update all those accounts, instead I forward all gmail emails to my new email address and use my new email for new accounts that I create.
In the opinions of many, Google is a monster. We know it and they know it too. Problem is, what can we do about it? Until then, expect Google to kick dirt in users faces. They will continue to terminate, ban, shadow ban, blacklist, violate privacy, sell your info, etc... at will and when convenient, for them.
Until a true challenger or their replacement arrives, don't be surprised at having to keep wiping the dirt out of your eye.
* People do not move to other countries
* People do not have double citizenships
* Even if they have double citizenhip their full name must be same
* Goole is always correct
Posts like this keep showing up here. My own Twitter account was deleted a few days ago and I never really even posted. I just used it to follow some accounts talking about the war.
If someone wanted my advice I might say:
1 - Be the change. Don't find it acceptable that some corporation kicks someone off their service / cancels them just because they're a republican, or vocal, or otherwise believes something you disagree with. Speech is free or it isn't. Elon Musk had a great tweet on this a couple of weeks ago concerning people asking him to censor Russian sources of information.
2 - Don't patronize those that censor. And it's no coincidence that those that censor are so often those that don't charge for their services. If you're getting it for free (money) it's not free (freedom). Sometimes paying a few bucks a month is worth it.
this is why people should be developing more desktop apps imo, but not surprised at this, have seen it and will see more of it in the future.
google is final authority on this and they just don't like the author (for whatever reason)
If you try to distribute some Windows application, you will discover that Microsoft pushes all kinds of bullshit unless you do it through their store too.
While I agree that they have hurt your account, and I hope that you find some resolution on the matter because it looks like you did things correctly without knowing the specifics, how have they destroyed your work for the last 2 years?
Well, I suppose his business (app) was reliant on their platform (Google Play) in several ways.
It's not like he can just transfer his stuff on f-droid or whatever and call it a day. If the app isn't on Google Play, it simply doesn't exist for most Android users. For instance, even being tech savvy, APKs and alternative stores are a huge turnoff for me.
Now it will be very difficult to spread the application, also the costs of servers and services are quite high and let's be honest, without understanding that people need your work, how long will you be ready to continue investing your time and money in it?
This could have been avoided by not having your entire business be at the mercy of a single company and whether any of its one million agents makes a mistake.
I'm sure his code is backed up, he's talking about the Google Play platform. He is locked out and hoping that his plea might reach someone at google and they'll reach out to him. So upvote the story and maybe that will increase the statistical chance that someone at google might fix it.
From the article it sounds like the main issue is that they lost years worth of building their brand/community/user-base and aren't sure they'll ever be able to publish to the play store under their name again.
Lots of people like and use Google. For me, I've moved away from their services for email and communication. Their tendency to launch a new project with tremendous momentum and support only to suddenly and without warning cancel the whole project (looking at you Google Wave) combined with their Orwellian level of control over the internet as a whole was the one-two punch that put me off entirely.
The duopoly of having Apple and Google control the entire mobile universe is gut wrenching. This developer is now unable to develop for millions of phones based on an algorithm deciding they were a bad actor and Google likely won't be compelled to care, a drop in the vast ocean of their concerns.
There aren't any alternatives for commercial or monetary apps. I've taken to using finds on f-droid for mission critical mobile applications but that's just not viable for most people.
i moved to mailinabox last year and it has been great. i can only encourage more people to try self hosting stuff and start from the simplest of things.
I'm currently testing out the Mailu docker container collection for self hosting email to get off custom-domain gmail. Looking good so far.
self hosting at home or self hosting on a 3rd party server? I'm also interested in going down this route.
How do you handle the fact that supposedly most large email corps mark your emails as spam?
No OP, but I’m using mailinabox on a linode vps for $5/month. The IP is in a range that doesn’t typically get marked as spam by default, and there are several checkers in place on the admin console to make sure that you’re dotting all of your “i”s and crossing all of your “t”s, from MTA-STS to DNSSEC. I do still run into problems from time to time, but it’s very rare these days.
Mailgun and others also have a free tier for relaying smaller numbers of email.
I've configured Postfix to use it for fallback if I can't deliver directly.
I use Digital Ocean and seem to struggle a bit delivering directly. 60 emails this month had to be delivered through mailgun since direct failed. Their free tier is up to 1250 emails per month.
Is there a documented reason to believe that DNSSEC is important, or really even at all influential, with deliverability? Most email origins, even the ones doing their own hosting, aren't DNSSEC-signed; if DNSSEC was a deliverability signal, most domains would be having problems.
Currently hosting at home, but tossing up whether it would be better off on a VPS.
I'm not currently getting blocked by Google or Microsoft, and maybe that's because it's hosted via my home connection (and therefore not within a set of known untrustworthy IP addresses), but Mailu has an easy path to ensuring SPF and DKIM are setup, which add legitimacy to the email domain.
I've been testing with a domain name that I haven't used for email before, so it's a clean slate, though I'm not sure how much difference that makes in getting blocked or not.
Fellow mailinabox user here. I love how their system “just works”, and wish there was more support for getting mail servers back in the hands of the masses.
Something that I very much enjoy is that mailinabox comes with nextcloud installed, which it uses for its exchange activesync calendar. I can sync everything from my keepass database to contacts and reminders to my mailinabox across devices.
To be honest, Wave didn't have any momentum at all, it was dead mere weeks after release. No one cared. Besides marketing-avid people. They try to keep their business a startup, and that's ok.
Likewise, you won't blame Clubhouse for closing their product.
But Google did close some very used products, with tons of momentum, among my favorite are Picasa and Reader.
> Wave didn't have any momentum at all, it was dead mere weeks after release.
That's what happens when you make a collaborative tool invite only and severely limited the number of invites you can send out. What a truly bizarre choice.
Worked extremely well with GMail.
GMail is not a closed platform like Wave was, though. In fact, it's one of the few tools Google offer that's designed to let you communicate with people who aren't on a Google platform.
For me the red line was when it became clear that Google was going to start taking a more active political role some time around 2017.
I don't see how anyone can trust them to control more than one out of email/search data/phone operating system/online identity. They're an ad-funded media company - there is not a track record of high standards in this space once people start flexing editorial muscle. And taking the chance of losing access to multiple fairly important communication channels at once is just needless risk. They're too big to trust.
> The duopoly of having Apple and Google control the entire mobile universe is gut wrenching. This developer is now unable to develop for millions of phones based on an algorithm deciding they were a bad actor and Google likely won't be compelled to care, a drop in the vast ocean of their concerns.
Not surprising. A duopoly is little better than a monopoly. This is why we needed other viable platforms - which we had in Blackberry and Windows Phone - but didn't support them enough so we lost them. And here we are, caught between Apple and Google.
> This is why we needed other viable platforms
Consider supporting GNU/Linux phones (Librem 5 and Pinephone), which support desktop Linux apps.
hoo yeah. libreoffice on my phone. sign me up!
In some ways a duopoly is worse. In a monopoly the government will generally force the actor to behave. In a duopoly the actors can point at each other and say the end user has a choice, even when actors behaviour is the same.
We see the same dynamic in two-party politics.
I've been working on a Chrome extension for a few years now.
I just embarked on it full time when i got a message from google saying it would be removed as it was in violation of one of their policies. It wasn't, so i appealed — then they said it was in violation of a different policy. Again it wasn't so I appealed. Eventually I got to keep it on the chrome store — without making any changes.
Although I got to keep the extension on the store, because of this interaction I've decided to abandon the project. My plan was to build it to be cross platform. But it's just not worth the effort when Google or Apple can just pull the rug from under you.
So, I'm sticking with web based projects now.
I really feel for this developer.
Usually when you read a “Big Tech company mistreated me and won’t respond” article like this, you’ll identify one or more things the author did wrong and realize the story isn’t as one-sided as the headline would suggest. But this case is as clear as can be: Andrey followed the rules and lost everything, while Google broke their own and failed to offer any kind of meaningful support.
There are numerous examples of Google doing this shit to businesses.
Never heard of it doing this to private customers though. So I assume it is safe to use gmail for me.
Android app developers (even those who do free/hobby apps) who publish on the Play Store are susceptible...
> Usually when you read a “Big Tech company mistreated me and won’t respond” article like this, you’ll identify one or more things the author did wrong and realize the story isn’t as one-sided as the headline would suggest.
I'm not convinced that's "usually" the case, but even when it is, it's still almost always the equivalent of being sentenced to death for jaywalking.
> But this case is as clear as can be: Andrey followed the rules and lost everything, while Google broke their own and failed to offer any kind of meaningful support.
Agreed.
I always give the user the benefit of any doubts when it comes to Google or any other company that uses "AI" support. I don't care if the user did it to themselves, a person at the company should be able and willing to fix it.
> To cut a long story short — due to moving to another country, I wanted to update my developer account to follow all the rules related to taxes in that country, but with Google, it’s not so easy, you can’t change the country for an existing payment profile (and also create a new payment profile), you need to create a new Google account, then pay for a new developer account and only then create a new payment profile and transfer your app to that new account.
These don't seem like the right steps. You can definitely have multiple payments profiles for one account, including from different countries (I do). There's no need to create a second account.
The instructions the author links to aren't suggesting creating a new account either.
I didn't find how to do it and also, before creating a new account I asked the support team, they said there is only one way: to create a new account
> These don't seem like the right steps
With google’s communication skills, I still can’t fault OP.
I've moved my email and calendar off Google, stakes are just too fucking high. Also ditched Chrome for trusty Firefox. The only reason I have a Google account is just for Android and Youtube
Edit: also DDG for search
Firefox is not trusty. Having your email and calendar on Google is not a risk as long as you sync them so if something happens to your accounts that you can move them to another provider.
> Having your email and calendar on Google is not a risk as long as you sync them so if something happens to your accounts that you can move them to another provider.
No, that’s not true. In the case where google shuts down your email, you will lose every email sent to that account after the shut down, and you’ll need to find everything and everyone that might send email to youraccount@gmail.com. This is why having a separate domain is super important, you could switch the MX records with minimal interruption.
Yeah, I didn't say you shouldn't use your own custom domain I just said using Google for email isn't a huge issue. I suggest an anonymous email service for this reason while using a custom domain. Doesn't matter if they shutdown one email, you can just create a new one and change where the forwarding email in your relay.
That is like the highest risk I can think of. Losing future emails that are sent to that email, losing all connected accounts, losing access to services/websites they decide to send a confirmation mail
That is why you should add a custom domain. You have the same lockout issue with Outlook, ProtonMail, or any email service where you don't own the domain.
I misunderstood you then, "having your mail on google and syncing them" sounds like you still have a @gmail.com but taking backups. Having your own domain is indeed the safest, I do that actually
Yeah, the question is whether google makes sense as a mail provided once you've decided that you needed to pay because of that feature.
If you're a company and don't want to manually handle email provisioning? Sure, why not. If you're an individual, Google isn't great. You could have a decent feature set along with great customer support elsewhere.
With an email addy relay like SinpeLogin you don't have to pay Google for that feature.
I’ve done the same. The hard part is actually finding a Docs replacement. They’re almost all priced for enterprise.
While not a perfect replacement, I like hedge doc myself.
https://hedgedoc.org/
Is office not free? I much prefer office online to Google docs but we have to use google docs at work :( though the collab feature is much better in Google docs.
Here is a self hosted alternative with real time collaboration https://cryptpad.fr/
Not just Docs, it's Google Drive that I find hard to replace (Docs, Sheets, Draw, Slide, etc). The recent debacle with Legacy GSuite motivated me to pay for a Microsoft 365 account, and create a sync of my Google Drive to OneDrive, converting the proprietary Google format into Office format. Then I do a 3-2-1 backup of the OneDrive files. (Backing up the local Google Drive folder is no good, because all you get is a stub of the Google proprietary files.)
Then I moved most of my other Google services (e.g. Domains, Gmail, Calendar, Search, Chrome) off to other companies and products (e.g. Cloudflare, Fastmail, DDG, Firefox). I figure that every interaction with Google proportionally increases the probability that my account will be terminated. So I moved off Google to protect my Google Drive, which seems ironic.
The last Google service that I need to move off is Google Voice. I haven't done a lot of research on this yet. If anyone knows of a good alternative that provides SMS-to-email forwarding, I'd be interested.
At least with office 365 you can save to older, less apt to be excluded from formats like doc. Personally I save everything in the old doc/xls/ppt formats. I hope they keep them around for a while. Mostly these days though I just have a server at home that I can vnc into and use openoffice. All that stuff gets backed up to backblaze. it's not as nice as google or office365 but it's mine and I control it and I won't be revoking my account on an AI whim.
Why do you still use the non X office formats? They're far easier for other office suites to read as their not just a memory dump of internal office structures.
specific formats aside, rclone can give you portability across any storage-as-a-service providers
Just bite the bullet and accept that any free replacement you do find is also going to have its downsides. Decent stuff costs money to develop and maintain, if you're not paying then you're doing a deal with a devil somewhere along the line.
Oh, I'd prefer to be a paying customer.
The issue is price structure. Github and Dropbox are great examples where I can be a Pro user and invite free users to collaborate, and it works great.
What we're seeing is a trend towards pay per seat with extremely limited guest capabilities if they exist at all. That's generally okay for businesses where $20/user/month is a rounding error on salaries. It just doesn't work for personal use.
Zoho?
I use LaTeX ಠ_ಠ
I moved my work domain off Google, too, and Calendar has been a huge hassle. It keeps eating invites from other people using Google Calendar unless they explicitly opt to send an email invitation.
I did the same after I wanted to play around with an old Pixel phone and install a different OS on it. I realized I wasn't doing it because I was terrified of Google shutting down my account. I had email, photos, contacts, calendars, even TV and cell service with them that could be taken away at a moment's notice. That's just way too much in the hands of a highly automated company.
Now it's down to YouTube, and if Google wants to shut that down, I can live with it.
Same here, also ditched Google Drive when they started to push the newest iteration of their Windows client.
I’ve been wanting to set up a home server, and then I can also ditch Google Photos and Calendar.
Is there a good alternative for Google Voice? As in, a phone number that rings multiple phones, can work with SIP phones, and that shows up with a good reputation as a standard phone number?
I haven't been in love with GVoice since I degoogled my designated "mobile phone" (I've just been limping along without being able to respond to texts on the go), but haven't taken the leap to Voip.ms or Flowroute, due to the reputation problem (eg many banks' snake oil authentications reject "voip" numbers).
My tentative plan is to move my main longstanding "main number" to one of those VOIP providers, and move snake oil auths to either the SIM card in my "mobile phone", a separate SIM on a fixed cell modem, or perhaps just a new GVoice number (which only needs to receive, so interop is easy by forwarding to email).
You can build your own google voice with twilio.
I run my own little mini telco for myself and it’s both interesting and fun.
Admittedly, I am also forced to maintain a “2fa mule” to forward 2fa to email and twilio number but that’s all part of the fun :)
I assume Twilio has the same number metadata problems as Voip.ms and Flowroute? Or have they managed to negotiate better standing with other telcos?
Can you state what these problems are? I have voip.ms but haven't actually used it as my primary number for awhile. They have SMS (using their custom app) and VoiP using SIP. Its too bad native SIP support in android (google pixel) wasn't that great for me which is why i stopped using it
1. Numbers don't work for banks' snake oil auth, craigslist account signup, etc. Either silently fails or says the number cannot be used.
2. Calls (to an iPhone, at least) where the number isn't already in address book show up as "Spam Risk" rather than the phone number.
3. Have had some people unable to text a voip.ms number, eg from Comcast mobile.
I'm not trying to hate on them or anything. I'm a happy customer for what they are. I just think these are limitations of all consumer-facing libre-protocol VOIP services, that GVoice manages to sidestep due to Fi, but I'd love to be wrong.
FWIW I've found the Voip.ms Android SMS app a bit flaky.
All correct. A twilio number will also have imperfect reputation although I can't say where it ranks among all of those providers ...
So, again - my phone number is a twilio number and I use that for voice/sms/humans but my 2FA goes to a "2FA mule" that I keep in my office:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28251107
... and all of these phones are just MVNO sims that I purchase pseudonymously and can just be thrown away at any time.
I don't care about losing my phone or my SIM card.
I may have seen that thread, and it probably gave me the idea for my second option. Still, I've got to wonder about the relative hassle-insecurity of a cheap MVNO versus GVoice. Like sure Google has a bad rep, but at least they've got good common-case security properties. Whereas a lowest bidder MVNO is likely to have poor security to begin with, and poor customer service for cleaning up after the fact. It might still be worth it to try a GVoice number first for every service, then fall back to the mule. (although everpresent point against Google: they're better at exploiting surveillance data, in a way that an MVNO won't be)
"all of these phones" implies you have expanded to multiple mules? I presume for multiple accounts at the same service? Is there any indication that really works for eg making it so all your Google accounts don't get locked at once? Or are you doing it to undermine the use of phone numbers for cross-service surveillance association?
FWIW I haven't looked in a while, but the cheapest US consumer SIM I've found is H2O Wireless (on AT&T) at $10 per 3 months.
"Is there any indication that really works for eg making it so all your Google accounts don't get locked at once?"
I don't have any google accounts.
"Or are you doing it to undermine the use of phone numbers for cross-service surveillance association?"
I am doing it because I love tinkering with the telephone network.
Imagine how nice it would be to just have an "YouTube account", that is not related/connected to any other Google Services. Now that I think about it, why would I even want to use the same account for Email, YouTube and Analytics? It would make a lot more sense for them to be completely separate.
When people say they move off gmail because the stakes are too high, I've kind of bought into that line -- the stakes are very high in terms of having e-mail be the main way recover all sorts of other accounts. But then I've tried to get myself to switch email providers and it doesn't actually make any sense to me.
Do I really believe, say, protonmail is less likely to screw me than gmail? Why?
What are the actual odds of gmail screwing me? They're huge, a few horror stories don't indicate much. And protonmail is small, the fact that I haven't heard horror stories doesn't mean much. (Not trying to pick on protonmail specifically, I think this all applies to any other provider I've seen suggested.)
Maybe the alternatives are in fact less likely to screw me due to some bullshit reason, I don't know. But I'm pretty sure with most other providers I'm more likely to get screwed for a technical reason, or because the company goes under, or because the company changes hands, or, if it's a paid service, because I fail to pay for some reason and the service doesn't degrade to free nicely.
I think switching to hotmail might make sense. They're a similar size to gmail, but I haven't heard the horror stories. And they're similar in all the other ways, unlikely to have a major technical problem, unlikely to change hands or go under, and I can't forget to pay them because it's free.
I'm just not convinced there's other better alternatives. If the stakes are too high the solution is probably just to make the stakes less high.
For me, it's less about Gmail as a service and more about Google as an ecosystem. They won't just mess up your Gmail, but also your YouTube, Stadia, Photos, Gvoice, and many, many more.
If Proton screws up, you just lost your email, not your entire digital life.
You can make more than one google account, though
And all of them can be banned, since Google can correlate them.
isn't hotmail dead? I thought microsoft bought msn and hotmail. Isn't it now @outlook.com email domains and no new hotmail accounts? I have some family members that have hotmail addresses but thats due to legacy support.
The MS in MSN stands for Microsoft, launched by Microsoft in 1995. Microsoft did indeed buy Hotmail.. in 1997 before google was even founded (1998). They have mostly retired the email addresses (you can instead get @outlook.TLD or @live.TLD addresses) but as you say, some have managed to maintain them for legacy reasons.
I guess the main thing is not so much to move off gmail or that protonmail is better, but to not have your email be dependent on Gmail.
Ie dont be joe.bloggs@gmail.com or have anything important tied to that account but rather have a Joe@bloggs.com email that you can use with any provider ... But most importantly move to a new provider in the event of problems without losing access to any of your 3rd party accounts tied to your email
It seems more likely to me that I'll accidentally let my domain expire than that google kills my gmail account
> Do I really believe, say, protonmail is less likely to screw me than gmail? Why?
Yes, I do believe that <any email provider I pay> is less likely to screw me than gmail.
The reason is that Google ties things everything together--even if you created multiple accounts. So, if some Google Play AI algorithm decides that my login is compromised, everything can get shut down. If I post something on YouTube that the Googleplex AI doesn't like, everything can get shut down.
Random email provider isn't going to suspend my email account because the YouTube AI got pissy.
Yes, any provider can screw you. But when that happens, I just want to be able to speak to a human about it.
For decades, a foundational principle requiring frequent reminders was, ALWAYS back up your work. We have another just like it these days: NEVER rely on Google.
It's not even a matter of having his work backed up. He still has the code. He no longer has access to the entire Google ecosystem and there is absolutely no other viable alternative for mobile.
This isn't completely true (though it might as well be).
It's possible to install Android apps without the Play store.
Install, yes.
Sell? Not so much.
There is Amazon's store and you could theoretically sell the .apk on your own site, but still.
Sadly its cases like these that reinforce basic life concepts. Does developing Android apps really hold enough value for someone to wrap their entire livelihoods around? I realize people can make big money doing this, but is this really something worthwhile spending your life doing? Maby from an ecosystem standpoint it's no different than developing on some other environment. But the Google pool is simply too small to put years of your life into something that can be canceled at the drop of a hat by an uncaring robotic overlord. Or maby I'm making too big of a deal out of it, maby this was just a side-project that only received 10 hours a week of their time. It still sucks as it was a fun passion project. The same question rises up though. If you are making money with a project, try to not to give too much value away to the landlord. If one landlord can with a single robotic keystroke wipe you out rethink what you are doing from the ground up.
It's not dissimilar from others in the FAANG ecosystem. Someone that's all in on Apple: uses Apple Pay, @mac.com email, etc. They change the credit card they have tied to Apple pay, some mistake happens, and then a month later they lose access to their email and other majorly important services they rely on. Very inconvenient, if it happens when you are traveling abroad you could be screwed pretty bad. People are learning slowly: never keep all your technology eggs in one landlords basket. Some day, some how, you will make a mistake. Whether it's your fault or not, or you expressed an unpopular opinion, your project/livelihood/life/etc. will get deactivated with no remorse.
I agree with you, I could never bring myself to invest my own livelihood into these walled garden ecosystems where you're a digital serf beholden to an overlord who can take your years of effort whenever they want.
Open web is where it's at, and windows application though even windows is starting to get locked down and having other problems.
The future is clearly web, for me at least.
*maybe
The difference is that with Apple when things get messed up like that you can call a human on the phone and fix it.
Can you give some practical advice also with that soliloquy? Are you saying we shouldn't develop native mobile apps but stick to web-apps ?
For anyone wondering, this appears to be the app: https://steprimo.com/android/us/app/io.linga/Linga-Read-book... (it's been instantly deleted from the google play store, which is just hilarious Google "minimum viable everything" behavior).
Google is the same as: Here is some free co-working space that you can set up your office in; lots of tools and free coffee. But no contracts either way.
Maybe a good place to set up and get started, but always think that it could be boarded up tomorrow.
And their OS and services power 70% of the world's smartphones
When the hell is Google going to realise the irreparable damage stories like this are doing to their brand? You want to challenge AWS & Azure in the cloud? Then fix this ASAP. Allow additional appeals; no automated bans; provide human responses. Honestly, it isn't that hard.
I wish every damn company would stop requiring an email and phone number for signups... I probably have hundreds of account using my gmail address and many probably don't even allow you to change it.
I won't update all those accounts, instead I forward all gmail emails to my new email address and use my new email for new accounts that I create.
The fundamental problem is that everyone accepts these centralized distribution systems.
It's absolutely not a requirement these days.
It's as if Walmart owned the freeway and has a toll booth with an ID check and everyone just shrugged and went with it.
This is exactly what happens in the east with toll roads and “ez-pass”.
I wonder if "do not use Google services" may become accepted wisdom among IT people.
The question shouldn't be if but when.
In the opinions of many, Google is a monster. We know it and they know it too. Problem is, what can we do about it? Until then, expect Google to kick dirt in users faces. They will continue to terminate, ban, shadow ban, blacklist, violate privacy, sell your info, etc... at will and when convenient, for them.
Until a true challenger or their replacement arrives, don't be surprised at having to keep wiping the dirt out of your eye.
So Google assumed that there
* People do not move to other countries * People do not have double citizenships * Even if they have double citizenhip their full name must be same * Goole is always correct
Posts like this keep showing up here. My own Twitter account was deleted a few days ago and I never really even posted. I just used it to follow some accounts talking about the war.
If someone wanted my advice I might say:
1 - Be the change. Don't find it acceptable that some corporation kicks someone off their service / cancels them just because they're a republican, or vocal, or otherwise believes something you disagree with. Speech is free or it isn't. Elon Musk had a great tweet on this a couple of weeks ago concerning people asking him to censor Russian sources of information.
2 - Don't patronize those that censor. And it's no coincidence that those that censor are so often those that don't charge for their services. If you're getting it for free (money) it's not free (freedom). Sometimes paying a few bucks a month is worth it.
> Posts like this keep showing up here.
Indeed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30771057.
How does transfer works in case application is sold to another company/developer? I guess process should be similar? anyone has any idea?
this is why people should be developing more desktop apps imo, but not surprised at this, have seen it and will see more of it in the future. google is final authority on this and they just don't like the author (for whatever reason)
But the desktop is just snap and the windows store now.
If you try to distribute some Windows application, you will discover that Microsoft pushes all kinds of bullshit unless you do it through their store too.
then, my response has been to suggest to stop using microsoft if that bothers you as a developer?
While I agree that they have hurt your account, and I hope that you find some resolution on the matter because it looks like you did things correctly without knowing the specifics, how have they destroyed your work for the last 2 years?
They didn't hurt his account, they killed it, and they used a robot executioner.
Well, I suppose his business (app) was reliant on their platform (Google Play) in several ways.
It's not like he can just transfer his stuff on f-droid or whatever and call it a day. If the app isn't on Google Play, it simply doesn't exist for most Android users. For instance, even being tech savvy, APKs and alternative stores are a huge turnoff for me.
> APKs and alternative stores are a huge turnoff for me
This is significantly more than what Apple offers
Now it will be very difficult to spread the application, also the costs of servers and services are quite high and let's be honest, without understanding that people need your work, how long will you be ready to continue investing your time and money in it?
As one who has no faith in human nature, I think:
1. These controllers are being paid off by companies who builds similar apps but not as good.
2. These controllers are stealing the code and selling it to other developers who will republish under a different name.
Why hasn't Google been split up yet?
Regulatory capture.
Make web apps.
This could have been avoided by not having your entire business be at the mercy of a single company and whether any of its one million agents makes a mistake.
no repo, no backups?
I'd think this is about an app play store listing with ratings and user numbers etc.
Back up what? Google Play?
You should reread the entire blog post.
I'm sure his code is backed up, he's talking about the Google Play platform. He is locked out and hoping that his plea might reach someone at google and they'll reach out to him. So upvote the story and maybe that will increase the statistical chance that someone at google might fix it.
From the article it sounds like the main issue is that they lost years worth of building their brand/community/user-base and aren't sure they'll ever be able to publish to the play store under their name again.
I still have the code and I can create an APK, but the prospects of the application are very sad.
it's more like a marketing part rather than a source code itself. my bad.