I created a GSuite account a long time ago for my family members. I've been screwed over by Google every few months the past few years.
* My kid can't get Google Voice
* There is no support
* Google intentionally tries to make things as insecure as possible
* And so on....
It's one of the many harsh lessons I've had about relying on Google for anything.
They're trying to upsell on a premium account, but that's not how it's playing out. The way it's playing out is they lose millions of dollars in cloud business in my professional life.
> * Google intentionally tries to make things as insecure as possible
Can you elaborate on this? I maintain a big GSuite organization for a NGO and Google consistently pushes for better security guidelines and gives admins powerful tools and policies to manage them. These(with the exception of vault licenses, which you probably won't need for your family) are not usually locked behind upgrades either.
Same with the support, the times I've had to contact them it was really just a click and maybe half a minute of waiting until I've had a representative on the line via chat/Phone that was able to help rather quickly.
Not who you asked, but if you have signed into a Google app (Gmail, youtube, etc) on a phone then they will send a push notification to that phone that bypasses 2FA. This cannot be disabled, you can choose to login with the second factor you setup, but it doesn't provide any security anymore.
If you are signing into something from a phone and get the prompt on that same phone you already have 1) chosen to add the account phone-wide on that phone and 2) provided 2FA to do so. What you are doing is browsing the web on your 2FA hardware and complaining it isn't secure.
1. I don’t want every device I login with Google to automatically become a 2FA device. There are plenty of scenarios where this reduces account security.
2. They send these non-optional push notifications as part of the account recovery process as well. Once someone was relentlessly trying to get into my gmail account (not maliciously, I think they probably had a similar address and got confused) and I was deluged with these notifications for hours with no way to make them stop.
3. They then go on to disable your actual recovery options that they've deemed "less secure".
I recently tried to sign on to my grandfathered Gapps account to reset its activity timeout (Google demands I perform the account recovery process for every login). This time, Google decided I couldn't authenticate with my longstanding recovery email, instead demanding that I use some long cleared browser/tablet session (lol, such surveillance culture assumptions).
I was eventually able to contact what appeared to be a real live human in GSuite support that took on my case even though it was a free account (after going a few rounds of them referring me to gmail account support, and gmail support bot referring me back to them). So believe it or not, it is possible to contact a human at Google.
Of course after I got the grandfathered Gapps account back, I was trying to figure out what it's actually good for, especially now that they've restricted adding domain names. The only things I could find are if I wanted to use gmail on my personal domain (no thanks), or if I want my published Google identity to include my own domain name (shrug). So back into storage it goes, this time with an explicit "2FA" tablet.
You seem to be labouring under some pretty egregious misconceptions. I am not signing into something from my phone. The flow is:
i try to log into gmail/google docs/whatever on my laptop's browser.
Google sends my phone, tablet, any other mobile device I own a notification.
if someone taps that notification, the laptop's browser is logged in, with no 2fa.
There's no such thing as a phone-wide google account on iPhones. There are google made apps, which completely fuck the security for your google account.
The push notification is more secure than sms 2fa, the only more secure option is a yubikey, and your can disable push notifications on favor of a yubikey.
GSuite started free. Google's goal is to up-sell me on a $6/month plan. With my whole family on, that'd be many thousands of dollars over our lifetimes.
We had an account compromised. We were trying to understand what happened, and ideally, get the attacker prosecuted. Google has the auditing tools which would have allowed us to do this, but:
1) Google removed access to security/auditing tools for legacy accounts, in an attempt to up-sell their $$$ accounts.
2) As a "legacy" account, we can't get Google support (the free support directs us to Workspace support, and Workspace blocks legacy accounts from contacting their support). There is no human being who will talk to us.
This would have been an open-and-shut issue, but I couldn't afford thousands of dollars to Google just to be able to do the right thing and prosecute the attacker. On my end, that means that I don't know what was stolen or destroyed, which is kind of a bummer. On your end, that means a cybercriminal is going free, and I'm pretty sure they'll pull the same shtick a few other places. Maybe your company.
There are viable places to do freemium (even if it is sleazy after promising free-for-life), but security isn't one of them. Intentionally bad security hurts the ecosystem. It's pissing in the pool.
I know you've got a paid account, but the callous attitude toward customer security and data translates over. You're a statistic. I'd never use Google Cloud in a B2B setting voluntarily, with viable alternatives.
>The way it's playing out is they lose millions of dollars in cloud business in my professional life.
You not being happy with something and for that reason not wanting to use something else makes no sense. As another comment points out using it as an actual "million dollar business" (to passphrase your words) gives support with a click and none of the problems you complain about.
>Google intentionally tries to make things as insecure as possible
Hyperbole. It doesn't. Just don't browse the internet on your 2FA device.
Their lowest package is $6/mth, if you're a student who just wants a domain with gmail at a low cost, you effectivly have to wait over a year to use youtube on that account if you so wish. Seems somewhat intense.
You actually cannot watch videos just fine, it blocks youtube/* You're presented with a page that says you don't have permission to use youtube(no errors), and when you google why, you find that support page.
I really feel like Google wants out of this business, but doesn't want the stink of yet another killed off product, little else makes sense to me.
They put so much effort establishing the market, and then just let it die on the vine, being surpassed by competitors, and nickle and dimming every little thing.
I prefer Google Workspace to M365, in that the technology still works better. Outlook search doesn't work. Word isn't good for collaborative editing. Etc.
I would never, ever, ever run a business on Google Workspace, because of a long history of Google treating customers like statistics, and Microsoft treating customers like partners. Microsoft's relationship with customers has been a slightly abusive partnership at time, but a relationship still beats being a statistic.
If my business fails due to Google Workspace, Google doesn't care. Workspace changes terms, discontinues things, and breaks things arbitrarily and capriciously, offloading costs and risk onto me. If my business fails due to a M365 issue, Microsoft treats it as a failure. They try to provide migration strategies, support promises to customers, etc.
When I was 15, I went for the glitziest technology. Having seen a few businesses through, I look less at the tech side and more at the business and human side. I don't believe Google will ever achieve trust there.
Not sure what if I agree with either of your accessment of Google technology working better, and a more certainly don't agree with the word not being a good collaboration tool.
I do agree that Google support isn't worth shit, and not worth the cost.
The mixture of Teams, Sharepoint, and OneDrive is like a giant black hole to lose stuff in.
Word collaborative editing updates with a big delay, and locks sections of text others are working on.
Outlook search is like a black hole where you never find emails.
The Google stuff is a lot better for collaboration.
Of course, Google can, on a whim or bug, wipe out all of your data (source: Startup I was affiliated with had a GSuite account where this happened), discontinue business-critical services, or otherwise crash your business. Those are the sorts of risks I don't need to deal with.
Again I have to disagree with your assessment of 365. We have over 35k of files and don't seem to have trouble managing them across hundreds of employees.
Of course we took the time to organize and manage permissions before hand.
And make sure that users are using the right products for the right purposes.
And I've experienced line locking in word, but zero delay, I don't know what sort of connection you have but in our daily use the updates are fast as chat.
All of our users are either win10 installs or via the web, are you using a Mac? because I know they are second class citizens on desktop software.
I'll grant you search on the desktop can be better, but via the web I find it to work fine.
I'll admit that there is a lot room for improvement around group calendars.
But other than that I don't see anything that Google is offer that is better for collaboration
Well that would be a mistake. Google should focus on acquiring as much corporate customer data as possible.
The future is in the data. Salesforce knows this, Microsoft knows this. I think Dropbox and Box know this... if they don't they should.
There are so many B2B products Google should build or enable partners to build. They've pretty much taken over the K12 education space too. My kids school day effectively runs through Google.
The main expense here is support and when you sell enterprise software you have to provide enterprise level support. Maybe that is what IT departments become now, first line Google support.
these sort of gsuite problems and the google cloud problems are the reason I'm moving away from google products for my personal stuff, only gmail to go
I've also been working to do this but it's difficult. I still have friends and family who use Google Photos, for example, and you're pretty stuck once you start using shared albums.
I see they've done this to reduce spam (otherwise someone can create a million Google apps accounts, pay with a fake credit card, and then go win the troll wars in the YouTube comments).
A better solution would be to treat all users from a single domain as one in the spam filter. Ie. If too many users from a single domain are found to be spamming, the whole domain gets YouTube blocked.
That would probably get them bad press too - when some companies viral marketing video gets taken down because a few other employees were using spambots.
I believe it's new accounts only, however if you do any kinda of migrating around domains (as happened to me) you'l trigger it. You can probably make an advance payment of $100 to google work and then wait the 2 months.
41 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 73.1 ms ] thread* My kid can't get Google Voice
* There is no support
* Google intentionally tries to make things as insecure as possible
* And so on....
It's one of the many harsh lessons I've had about relying on Google for anything.
They're trying to upsell on a premium account, but that's not how it's playing out. The way it's playing out is they lose millions of dollars in cloud business in my professional life.
Can you elaborate on this? I maintain a big GSuite organization for a NGO and Google consistently pushes for better security guidelines and gives admins powerful tools and policies to manage them. These(with the exception of vault licenses, which you probably won't need for your family) are not usually locked behind upgrades either.
Same with the support, the times I've had to contact them it was really just a click and maybe half a minute of waiting until I've had a representative on the line via chat/Phone that was able to help rather quickly.
2. They send these non-optional push notifications as part of the account recovery process as well. Once someone was relentlessly trying to get into my gmail account (not maliciously, I think they probably had a similar address and got confused) and I was deluged with these notifications for hours with no way to make them stop.
I recently tried to sign on to my grandfathered Gapps account to reset its activity timeout (Google demands I perform the account recovery process for every login). This time, Google decided I couldn't authenticate with my longstanding recovery email, instead demanding that I use some long cleared browser/tablet session (lol, such surveillance culture assumptions).
I was eventually able to contact what appeared to be a real live human in GSuite support that took on my case even though it was a free account (after going a few rounds of them referring me to gmail account support, and gmail support bot referring me back to them). So believe it or not, it is possible to contact a human at Google.
Of course after I got the grandfathered Gapps account back, I was trying to figure out what it's actually good for, especially now that they've restricted adding domain names. The only things I could find are if I wanted to use gmail on my personal domain (no thanks), or if I want my published Google identity to include my own domain name (shrug). So back into storage it goes, this time with an explicit "2FA" tablet.
i try to log into gmail/google docs/whatever on my laptop's browser. Google sends my phone, tablet, any other mobile device I own a notification. if someone taps that notification, the laptop's browser is logged in, with no 2fa.
There's no such thing as a phone-wide google account on iPhones. There are google made apps, which completely fuck the security for your google account.
The push notification is more secure than sms 2fa, the only more secure option is a yubikey, and your can disable push notifications on favor of a yubikey.
We had an account compromised. We were trying to understand what happened, and ideally, get the attacker prosecuted. Google has the auditing tools which would have allowed us to do this, but:
1) Google removed access to security/auditing tools for legacy accounts, in an attempt to up-sell their $$$ accounts.
2) As a "legacy" account, we can't get Google support (the free support directs us to Workspace support, and Workspace blocks legacy accounts from contacting their support). There is no human being who will talk to us.
This would have been an open-and-shut issue, but I couldn't afford thousands of dollars to Google just to be able to do the right thing and prosecute the attacker. On my end, that means that I don't know what was stolen or destroyed, which is kind of a bummer. On your end, that means a cybercriminal is going free, and I'm pretty sure they'll pull the same shtick a few other places. Maybe your company.
There are viable places to do freemium (even if it is sleazy after promising free-for-life), but security isn't one of them. Intentionally bad security hurts the ecosystem. It's pissing in the pool.
I know you've got a paid account, but the callous attitude toward customer security and data translates over. You're a statistic. I'd never use Google Cloud in a B2B setting voluntarily, with viable alternatives.
You not being happy with something and for that reason not wanting to use something else makes no sense. As another comment points out using it as an actual "million dollar business" (to passphrase your words) gives support with a click and none of the problems you complain about.
>Google intentionally tries to make things as insecure as possible
Hyperbole. It doesn't. Just don't browse the internet on your 2FA device.
I can’t tell if this is supposed to be a joke
They put so much effort establishing the market, and then just let it die on the vine, being surpassed by competitors, and nickle and dimming every little thing.
Both are massive and profitable businesses.
Take Google apps (or its name of the week) and compare it to M365
It becomes clear they aren't staying competitive or innovating.
And they gave up a 3 year lead
I would never, ever, ever run a business on Google Workspace, because of a long history of Google treating customers like statistics, and Microsoft treating customers like partners. Microsoft's relationship with customers has been a slightly abusive partnership at time, but a relationship still beats being a statistic.
If my business fails due to Google Workspace, Google doesn't care. Workspace changes terms, discontinues things, and breaks things arbitrarily and capriciously, offloading costs and risk onto me. If my business fails due to a M365 issue, Microsoft treats it as a failure. They try to provide migration strategies, support promises to customers, etc.
When I was 15, I went for the glitziest technology. Having seen a few businesses through, I look less at the tech side and more at the business and human side. I don't believe Google will ever achieve trust there.
I do agree that Google support isn't worth shit, and not worth the cost.
Word collaborative editing updates with a big delay, and locks sections of text others are working on.
Outlook search is like a black hole where you never find emails.
The Google stuff is a lot better for collaboration.
Of course, Google can, on a whim or bug, wipe out all of your data (source: Startup I was affiliated with had a GSuite account where this happened), discontinue business-critical services, or otherwise crash your business. Those are the sorts of risks I don't need to deal with.
Of course we took the time to organize and manage permissions before hand.
And make sure that users are using the right products for the right purposes.
And I've experienced line locking in word, but zero delay, I don't know what sort of connection you have but in our daily use the updates are fast as chat.
All of our users are either win10 installs or via the web, are you using a Mac? because I know they are second class citizens on desktop software.
I'll grant you search on the desktop can be better, but via the web I find it to work fine.
I'll admit that there is a lot room for improvement around group calendars.
But other than that I don't see anything that Google is offer that is better for collaboration
There are so many B2B products Google should build or enable partners to build. They've pretty much taken over the K12 education space too. My kids school day effectively runs through Google.
The main expense here is support and when you sell enterprise software you have to provide enterprise level support. Maybe that is what IT departments become now, first line Google support.
A better solution would be to treat all users from a single domain as one in the spam filter. Ie. If too many users from a single domain are found to be spamming, the whole domain gets YouTube blocked.
That would probably get them bad press too - when some companies viral marketing video gets taken down because a few other employees were using spambots.
Anti-spam is hard...