I'm genuinely sorry to hear that. Our analysts are looking into the issue described in the article, hopefully we find something we can fix that will resolve this.
I struggle to see how your analysts could do this without looking into specific instances of the problem. Perhaps you intend to contact the author of the article to ask for this. That might work in this case, but in the general case there is absolutely no way for people to report this problem to Google!
Yes, I'm yet another person with the same problem as the author of the article - running my own mail server for years, only I send mail from it, very low volume, everything set up properly, etc. The difference is that my emails go to spam, rather than being rejected by the SMTP servers, which to me is even worse, since I never know whether an email I sent to GMail has been delivered or not. Since GSuite is so popular now, I never know this for any unfamiliar domain, unless I do an MX lookup.
You say all the right words, but Google's actions on this issue (or lack thereof) speak much louder. It's very difficult to believe that the situation will improve and many comments here reflect this skepticism.
Since you profile claims you are from Google, you should know by helping here you really doing disservice to everyone else having same problems. Hacker News is not a “gmail customer support hotline center”. You have billions of dollars to setup a system or heck the whole state of the art department to help people with their gmail problem. So you will help two people on HN bitching at gmail.. what about all those that never heard of HN? Sorry friend you doing this only because at some degree google and gmail obviously does not want to look bad to tech society. /rant
Not sure why you are being downvoted, you have a point. There is no excuse for the way Google is operating now - poor customer support, the only recourse twits and HN posts.
I think it also hurts Google themselves. There is a reason they have trouble competing with AWS. Why should developers trust Google that there will be a person on the other side helping them out when things go wrong? And they always do, at worst possible time. Amazon, for all its problems, has excellent customer service.
So your parent's attempt to fix this is a PR stunt at best. If they (/Google) care about this, they should fix the problems in the process:
- define, hardcode and publish rules that will lead to successfull e-mail delivery (SPF, DKIM, history,...)
- establish a gmail technical customer support service
And they should stop with preferential treatment of those who shame them publicly. Or do they want all of us to start doing the same?
> Or do they want all of us to start doing the same?
An increase in public shamings probably means that public shamings become less news- or interest-worthy. So an increase in shamings might not have as much effect as you might expect.
That’s true, but I don’t think we're anywhere near there yet. Especially when it comes to the mainstream — most people outside of tech don’t have any idea this is a problem.
(FWIW, I don’t seem to have this problem in a significant way, but that might be because I have DMARC set up.)
I don't think you can have an open, healthy email ecosystem, when the parties involved (the people running and managing email infrstructure) can't communicate with each other and get help.
Their customer support is just fine. Only trouble is, we're not the customer, we're the product. (And no, I'm not interested in hearing about how that's a hackneyed worn-out cliché, or whatever, given that it's a true statement. Downvote and move on.)
A big part of the problem with Google taking everything over is that only in very limited situations -- the service formerly known as YouTube Red, for instance -- are we given the ability to actually conduct business with them as a paying customer. Conventionally, Google users don't even rise to the status of sharecroppers, since we're the "crops" being sold to advertisers. They expect us to depend on them for the everyday conduct of our personal lives and careers, yet the only way to appeal for help is to start a shitstorm on Twitter or HN and hope somebody notices.
> I'm not interested in hearing about how that's a hackneyed worn-out cliché
Well, it's a hackneyed worn-out cliché. Without the users there's no viable product. That's what makes them the customers and that's why they need adequate customer support. The fact that you pay for the product with ad impressions rather than dollars doesn't change anything about that dynamic.
Well, it's a hackneyed worn-out cliché. Without the users there's no viable product. That's what makes them the customers
No, that's what makes them "users." The customers are the advertisers who actually pay money to Google. You can rest assured that they don't have to post a cri de coeur on social media to get a response from Google when something goes wrong.
IMO, a company that does its level best to act like vital public infrastructure needs to be held to standards appropriate to vital public infrastructure. If that's a controversial point of view, then so be it.
> No, that's what makes them "users." The customers are the advertisers who actually pay money to Google.
I understand your idea. But in my opinion this is a useless and unconventional definition of the word 'customer'. The customer is the one who receives a service in exchange for compensation. In this case the service is gmail and the compensation is ad impressions. The fact that Google can sell those ad impressions is secondary to that dynamic. If there were no users willing to provide that compensation in exchange for access to gmail, then there'd be no product, and there'd be no secondary market for selling those advertisements. Meanwhile even with no advertisers there would still be a product, and there would still be other avenues for monetizing it.
> You can rest assured that they don't have to post a cri de coeur on social media to get a response from Google when something goes wrong.
Are you sure about that? A quick google for "adwords support experiences" gives quite a number of telling stories to the contrary. Besides, there are several orders of magnitude more users than there are advertisers, so obviously it's going to be much easier for users' issues to get lost in the noise. And obviously no advertising agencies are going to be getting any sympathy by complaining on Twitter.
This is not doing what you think it does. And it's the second comment where you are spreading your misinformation I've seen in this thread now. :( This tool is for people who want to send their emails via GSuite and their own domain. Not a lot of people in this thread want that, and it certainly has nothing to do at all with what is being discussed in the comment threads where you replied to.
That all depends entirely on whether the "fix" is white-listing the two responders somehow, or flagging the larger issue to the correct team and figuring something more general out.
I agree with your message except the motivation part - you can't question that particular person's motives. It may very well be they care just like many other people at Google do, even though the management doesn't.
