This should be illegal. Megacorps eat more and more of our life and regular people are increasingly at mercy of these hostile entities. They should be pushed more against. If we can't have proper anti monopoly splits like AT&T, then at least ways to prevent them exerting too much power are long due. If you provide an essential service, responsibility should match that.
There needs to be a law that every cloud-based service which has accounts for more than (say) 1% of population, must have a physical service counter presence in every major town staffed by an employee who must be empowered to resolve all account access issues.
Notice how phone carries manage to have a shop in every little strip mall, you're never more than a few miles from the nearest one. Google takes in far more revenue, can easily afford the same. Or they could even just partner with the phone carriers and have a staffed desk in every tmobile/at&t/verizon shop.
"Despite repeatedly explaining this, they ignored my assertions and continue to hold my email hostage."
Well, you have become the product here. That also happens by other "free" email providers too. I had this happen to me on inbox.lt; the guy demanded I use a smartphone to "prove" my identity. At that point I realised they want to connect this data to the account and sell it to others who are interested in that.
Dealing with Google is a nightmare. I'm one of the volunteer sysadmins for https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/, a DIY and self-build forum. For 10 years it ranked very well on Google, particularly in the UK, and then on 28 December 2025 it disappeared from Google's index.
Nothing has helped, the Google forums are tumbleweed and there's no one to reach out to for what could be an algorithm change or something gone wrong. I'm a paying Workspace customer and it's made me think I need a backup plan in case I'm ever suspended. Reports like this don't encourage.
I can't believe I'm praising Microsoft (Office365) here but it actually has a track record of actually having support, support people that you can talk on the phone with and knows how to navigate the dark corners of their convoluted systems and actually solved my problems (even if it was caused by Microsoft's horrific UI in the first place).
I guess one way to protect yourself from this would be to use another IAM solution for SSO login to Google Workspace, but is there any reasonable choice for small businesses other than Entra ID or Okta?
I think Google has done some cool stuff, and I think in a lot of ways they're, at least historically, one of the less evil big tech players.
I gotta say, though, that my experience with trying to get them to sort out any kind of issue with their services makes me reluctant to spend any money with them.
I bought a Pixel phone. As per the sales terms, the phone came with one year of Gemini AI Pro service. Except, the redemption process to get the year of service didn't work for me. I contacted Google, they never fixed it or offered any solution. I simply didn't get the year of service I was promised.
My friend, who bought a Pixel around the same time, also wasn't able to get the year of Gemini they were promised.
That same friend has a Google One subscription, billed through their phone carrier. Recently, Google (or the provider?) discontinued that specific Google One plan, as well as the option to bill via your carrier. This was all covered in an email sent to my friend. As consolation, the email explained, my friend was given the option to switch to a different plan, billed monthly by Google (instead of their phone carrier), with 6 months free. Except, the new plan, and the 6 months free, wasn't selectable as a plan type for their account. So my friend emails Google about it and, to my complete lack of surprise, Google was unwilling/unable to provide any resolution.
At this point, I legitimately don't understand why, unless I had no other option, I would pick Google for services. They clearly put no real effort into resolving any service issues for any customer that's not spending millions with them.
Same. Purchased Pixel 9 Pro XL, didn't get my year of Gemini or Google One, technical missuport couldn't be bothered circling between all the investigation steps I did and re-did already and tej "fixes" that have been verified ate not fixing anything.
"Support" agents couldn't be bothered - this feels like AI trapping me in the tarpit maze to save a few USD on the disk storage and infefence cost, effectively scamming me.
Anyone have an idea whether it would be practical to go to small claims court? I'm curious if this is a path consumers can take if a corporation breaks an agreement?
> ... my experience with trying to get them to sort out any kind of issue with their services makes me reluctant to spend any money with them.
When you pay for Google Workspace you are the client, not the customer and they do answer phone calls for support. The only two times my wife and I needed them for our SMEs, they picked up the phone and helped us resolve our issues. Super professional too. Haven't needed to give them a call in something like 8 years now.
Don't know about Pixel phone and Google One subscriptions but for SMEs Google Workspace is a godsend: it's incredibly cheap per employee and it's the way out of the Microsoft mediocrity. Everything only requires a browser, no matter the OS (wife works from Linux and now added a Mac Mini, for example): Windows can, at long last, get the middle finger in SMEs.
I'll forever be thankful to Google for allowing me to help many people get rid of Microsoft products, including Windows.
It took me 13 years to get them to unban my adsense account. To this day I still have no idea what happened and have assumed it was a competitor sending fake clicks or something.
> I think Google has done some cool stuff, and I think in a lot of ways they're, at least historically, one of the less evil big tech players.
It's been a decade since Google broke their promise not to use information gleaned from your use of their services to sell ads.
> Google quietly erased that last privacy line in the sand — literally crossing out the lines in its privacy policy that promised to keep the two pots of data separate by default. In its place, Google substituted new language that says browsing habits “may be” combined with what the company learns from the use Gmail and other tools.
They sold me a Pixel phone with a broken battery (I think 6a? Where the battery fails after 400 charging cycles). I got an email and the offer to just get 100$ in cash from them instead of sending my phone away to get it fixed. I never received the money after filling out all the forms. Fuck google.
>I bought a Pixel phone. As per the sales terms, the phone came with one year of Gemini AI Pro service. Except, the redemption process to get the year of service didn't work for me. I contacted Google, they never fixed it or offered any solution. I simply didn't get the year of service I was promised.
I fixed this by deleting the subscription data for Google One (which also refunded me a prorated amount for my Google One plan), and then waiting a day.
Once upon a time at Google: The year was 2013, and I'd been selected to be among the first 8,000 people to get Google Glass. I had to go to Google HQ in NYC from my home in Virginia to get it and be instructed 1:1 on how to use it. I was given a toll-free phone number to call for support by a Glass expert, available 24/7/365.
Not only did they answer immediately whenever I had even the smallest problem or question: I twice broke my Glass, and each time I'd call the support number to ask for a replacement.
Google's policy was that no matter how you broke it or how many times it happened, they'd replace it free. They'd immediately send a box to return the broken device (prepaid) and a couple days later a brand new Glass would arrive.
I bought the Google 3-pod wifi system when it first came out. There was an 844 number for support on the back. I remember calling it when I didn't understand something and got an instant pickup by support staff.
With this comment in mind, I just now called that same number with an instant pickup telling me they no longer take support calls at that number.
Yep, monopolistic loss leaders can feel great when they're showering you with expensive marketing, right up until they reliably pull the rug in an effort to screw everyone or recoup their losses.
It was only a few years ago that they offered all of their Stadia subscribers a full refund for every dollar they ever spent on the platform. By this point their reputation for customer service was well and truly known, but colour me surprised when I received a not insignificant sum credited to my bank account from Google.
I saw it mentioned in a comment elsewhere in this thread, but the level of service you get really seems dependant on which pocket of Google is responsible for the product you happen to be using. Unfortunately Workspace is a giant pocket with many billions of users with suboptimal and/or perpetually exhausted support.
At least he owns his own domain and can eventually switch over. A few years ago we decided to switch our personal emails from gmail accounts to domains we own (though the email is still handled by google.) This way if we ever lose our google account, we can switch the MX and be able to get all our recovery emails, bank second factors, password recoveries, etc.
Been there done that, none of it works, till this date my YouTube account is suspended and they can't do a thing about it.
Google Drive & Workspace are their most poorly designed products with the shittiest support ecosystem. Google would rather bleed money than work on it.
That's one of reason I started DoShare Personal Cloud[₁]
Instead of getting more dependant on Big Tech's AI products, I think the perfect use for AI is develop tools and workflows that decouple one from Big Tech.
This occurs to dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of people on a daily basis. It happened to me many years ago. This is your opportunity to escape, instead you cry out here for attention. How pathetic
Using a Google Workspace Super Admin account for your non-admin day to day needs is similar to using your AWS root account instead of IAM users.
In my experience Google Workspave support is very good. I’ve always been able to get a knowledgeable person on a call to debug issues without much difficulty.
But yea, if you’re locked out of your admin account, that’s another story. Very sjmilar to if you get locked out of your AWS root account. It’s a nightmare to recover.
So you're saying for a simple setup of 1 user, you really need to pay for 2 users. The admin account and the real user you want to use, which doubles the cost.
I recently had to go through the recovery flow for an admin account and it was wild. Despite Google manually unlocking the account and giving me a reset link, every login was forced to authenticate via SMS using the (removed) phone number. Luckily I was able to get a hold of it and get the code, but even after adding a TOTP and security key 2FA, further logins still required SMS.
It feels like the security team made this change to reduce account hijacking but it's at complete odds with the recovery flow and modern security practices. Better hope your phone number doesn't get hijacked or recycled because it's the key to your account now, security keys be damned.
Google enabled 2FA on my Gmail account without any prior notice. I have the username, password, recovery email, and all emails from the account are forwarded to my Fastmail, but I can't ever log into the account again because it is trying to do 2FA by SMS to a number I don't have.
I've tried everything to find someone inside Google to fix this, but so far no luck. At least with Meta you can find someone on a forum like Swapd who will take a small bribe to fix these issues.
Google needs to understand that watching this nightmare scenario play out over and over again is actively destroying trust in their platform. When your email, authentication, documents, payroll, and CRM all flow through a single provider and that provider can lock you out overnight with no meaningful recourse, you’ve invited customers to place their entire digital presence into a house of cards. The fact that this same story surfaces almost daily should be a wake up call to existing and prospective customers. Every unresolved lockout is one more reason to start planning an exit. Google has led the effort to lower the bar so much that it’s commonplace and somehow acceptable to ghost paying customers who youve locked out or even worse bounce them through a gauntlet of AI chat bots with the illusion that you are even aware of the damage you’ve caused.
> I removed my phone number from the account. I am travelling to the UK for a short period and did not want to have roaming on my Australian phone.
So for my own notes, removing a phone number from my Google account before travel will risk account suspension. Hope OP resolves it, but also need to make sure this never happens to me.
If you’re operating Google workspace without a well oiled Enterprise behind the scenes, a single admin account is a single point of failure.
I had this happen a couple years ago when I was migrating to a different domain. The only difference was all of the authentication that I supplied Google said was an adequate and I got into some sort of a login loop where Authenticator, SMS, DNS record nor pass key would provide enough authentication for me to get in.
I got the automated got bought to finally send me the mythical form, after completing that I was told that they were unable to authenticate me further. I ended up emailing their support multiple times and threatening lawsuits multiple times when I got a magic call from a human at Google. They also sent me the link that put me into a login loop however after chatting with them for nearly an hour I got a different magic login link form which appeared to work.
OP triggered every possible red flags for suspicious account takeover in Google systems: deleting his recovery phone number, moving to another country and cellular provider. And then he gets surprised that the account is in 30 day cool down period??? I don't understand people sometimes.
This is why I do full Google Takeout every 2 months and have my own domain with Workspace. I don't rely on cloud file storage. The calendar is important, but I could switch easily.
IMO, the worst part of this is Workspace support is immune to ANY explanation. I mean, credit card companies are well used to "is this your transaction?" emails.
It's been [0] days since the last "Cloud provider banned me and I lost everything" article.
Everyone who depends on the good graces of a cloud provider for something (not just Google, but Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, whatever) needs to at the very least, take a moment, and figure out what their plan is when they are suddenly banned and locked out permanently, without any way to contact the company.
Does life just go on, since you don't have anything important hosted there? (Best Case)
Do you lose some precious family photos and use it as a tough learning opportunity to stop doing what you're doing? (Next best)
Do you lose access to your E-mail and are suddenly not able to do 2FA, reset passwords, communicate with the company or the Internet in any way, and so on, and now have to panic?
Do you complain online, hoping that someone in the company sees your post and has the ability to restore your account, which you then continue to use because you learned nothing?
Having an online account suddenly suspended is a real, non-zero, but unlikely risk. You should at least have a disaster plan if you rely on these things for anything important. Or better yet, stop relying on them for important things like your identity or precious files!
"A guy on HN told me one time, 'Don't let yourself get attached to any cloud services you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.'" -- Robert de Niro
google is worst because normal people with no tech experience can accidentally get banned from the only email account they ever had since 2005 which has all their insurance tax resumes family photo etc , never even understand how it happened , or fix it
> It's been [0] days since the "business I contract with to provide services locked me out of the building we rent, ghosted me, and threw all my shit out" article.
In the case of Google Workspace for our company, I'm using Cubebackup[1]. I've been going through the disaster recovery exercises lately, and thinking about what I've been calling "external backups", which are backups of a service that are stored and restorable outside that service.
It can be surprisingly difficult with a lot of SaaS products (including Google).
Yeah. And every time I see a new "cloud provider banned me and I lost everything" article (i.e: every few days), I always just want to ask the same question(s):
"I'm sure it's very sad that you've lost all your [email|calendar|photos|whatever]... but, were you, a person who has chosen to rely on a service provided by a cloud provider with a track record which goes back well over 15 years of locking people out of their accounts with no recourse for the user, not aware that said provider has a track record of doing so, in some cases without even giving an explanation why?
Were you not aware that the service you were relying on them for was critically important to you? Or were you unaware that the provider of this service has the capability to completely disable the service you're relying on with the simple flip of a switch?
I'm fascinated by this decision you've made - could you please explain the thought process by which you chose to use this service which you have no control over for critical things?"
85 comments
[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 69.4 ms ] threadGood luck to you
Notice how phone carries manage to have a shop in every little strip mall, you're never more than a few miles from the nearest one. Google takes in far more revenue, can easily afford the same. Or they could even just partner with the phone carriers and have a staffed desk in every tmobile/at&t/verizon shop.
Well, you have become the product here. That also happens by other "free" email providers too. I had this happen to me on inbox.lt; the guy demanded I use a smartphone to "prove" my identity. At that point I realised they want to connect this data to the account and sell it to others who are interested in that.
Nothing has helped, the Google forums are tumbleweed and there's no one to reach out to for what could be an algorithm change or something gone wrong. I'm a paying Workspace customer and it's made me think I need a backup plan in case I'm ever suspended. Reports like this don't encourage.
I gotta say, though, that my experience with trying to get them to sort out any kind of issue with their services makes me reluctant to spend any money with them.
I bought a Pixel phone. As per the sales terms, the phone came with one year of Gemini AI Pro service. Except, the redemption process to get the year of service didn't work for me. I contacted Google, they never fixed it or offered any solution. I simply didn't get the year of service I was promised.
My friend, who bought a Pixel around the same time, also wasn't able to get the year of Gemini they were promised.
That same friend has a Google One subscription, billed through their phone carrier. Recently, Google (or the provider?) discontinued that specific Google One plan, as well as the option to bill via your carrier. This was all covered in an email sent to my friend. As consolation, the email explained, my friend was given the option to switch to a different plan, billed monthly by Google (instead of their phone carrier), with 6 months free. Except, the new plan, and the 6 months free, wasn't selectable as a plan type for their account. So my friend emails Google about it and, to my complete lack of surprise, Google was unwilling/unable to provide any resolution.
At this point, I legitimately don't understand why, unless I had no other option, I would pick Google for services. They clearly put no real effort into resolving any service issues for any customer that's not spending millions with them.
"Support" agents couldn't be bothered - this feels like AI trapping me in the tarpit maze to save a few USD on the disk storage and infefence cost, effectively scamming me.
People really fail to unionize when they can just piss in the wind.
Contract violation. The problem is it's simply too burdensome to go to small claims court.
When you pay for Google Workspace you are the client, not the customer and they do answer phone calls for support. The only two times my wife and I needed them for our SMEs, they picked up the phone and helped us resolve our issues. Super professional too. Haven't needed to give them a call in something like 8 years now.
Don't know about Pixel phone and Google One subscriptions but for SMEs Google Workspace is a godsend: it's incredibly cheap per employee and it's the way out of the Microsoft mediocrity. Everything only requires a browser, no matter the OS (wife works from Linux and now added a Mac Mini, for example): Windows can, at long last, get the middle finger in SMEs.
I'll forever be thankful to Google for allowing me to help many people get rid of Microsoft products, including Windows.
It's been a decade since Google broke their promise not to use information gleaned from your use of their services to sell ads.
> Google quietly erased that last privacy line in the sand — literally crossing out the lines in its privacy policy that promised to keep the two pots of data separate by default. In its place, Google substituted new language that says browsing habits “may be” combined with what the company learns from the use Gmail and other tools.
https://psmag.com/news/googles-broken-privacy-promise/
I fixed this by deleting the subscription data for Google One (which also refunded me a prorated amount for my Google One plan), and then waiting a day.
Not only did they answer immediately whenever I had even the smallest problem or question: I twice broke my Glass, and each time I'd call the support number to ask for a replacement.
Google's policy was that no matter how you broke it or how many times it happened, they'd replace it free. They'd immediately send a box to return the broken device (prepaid) and a couple days later a brand new Glass would arrive.
Like I said, once upon a time....
With this comment in mind, I just now called that same number with an instant pickup telling me they no longer take support calls at that number.
I saw it mentioned in a comment elsewhere in this thread, but the level of service you get really seems dependant on which pocket of Google is responsible for the product you happen to be using. Unfortunately Workspace is a giant pocket with many billions of users with suboptimal and/or perpetually exhausted support.
Google Drive & Workspace are their most poorly designed products with the shittiest support ecosystem. Google would rather bleed money than work on it.
That's one of reason I started DoShare Personal Cloud[₁]
[1] https://getcloud.doshare.me
In my experience Google Workspave support is very good. I’ve always been able to get a knowledgeable person on a call to debug issues without much difficulty.
But yea, if you’re locked out of your admin account, that’s another story. Very sjmilar to if you get locked out of your AWS root account. It’s a nightmare to recover.
It feels like the security team made this change to reduce account hijacking but it's at complete odds with the recovery flow and modern security practices. Better hope your phone number doesn't get hijacked or recycled because it's the key to your account now, security keys be damned.
I've tried everything to find someone inside Google to fix this, but so far no luck. At least with Meta you can find someone on a forum like Swapd who will take a small bribe to fix these issues.
So for my own notes, removing a phone number from my Google account before travel will risk account suspension. Hope OP resolves it, but also need to make sure this never happens to me.
I thought with Workspace you'd actually be spared from this kind of BS
I guess not?
I had this happen a couple years ago when I was migrating to a different domain. The only difference was all of the authentication that I supplied Google said was an adequate and I got into some sort of a login loop where Authenticator, SMS, DNS record nor pass key would provide enough authentication for me to get in.
I got the automated got bought to finally send me the mythical form, after completing that I was told that they were unable to authenticate me further. I ended up emailing their support multiple times and threatening lawsuits multiple times when I got a magic call from a human at Google. They also sent me the link that put me into a login loop however after chatting with them for nearly an hour I got a different magic login link form which appeared to work.
IMO, the worst part of this is Workspace support is immune to ANY explanation. I mean, credit card companies are well used to "is this your transaction?" emails.
Everyone who depends on the good graces of a cloud provider for something (not just Google, but Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, whatever) needs to at the very least, take a moment, and figure out what their plan is when they are suddenly banned and locked out permanently, without any way to contact the company.
Does life just go on, since you don't have anything important hosted there? (Best Case)
Do you lose some precious family photos and use it as a tough learning opportunity to stop doing what you're doing? (Next best)
Do you lose access to your E-mail and are suddenly not able to do 2FA, reset passwords, communicate with the company or the Internet in any way, and so on, and now have to panic?
Do you complain online, hoping that someone in the company sees your post and has the ability to restore your account, which you then continue to use because you learned nothing?
Having an online account suddenly suspended is a real, non-zero, but unlikely risk. You should at least have a disaster plan if you rely on these things for anything important. Or better yet, stop relying on them for important things like your identity or precious files!
We really need to just fix the laws.
It can be surprisingly difficult with a lot of SaaS products (including Google).
[1] https://www.cubebackup.com/
"I'm sure it's very sad that you've lost all your [email|calendar|photos|whatever]... but, were you, a person who has chosen to rely on a service provided by a cloud provider with a track record which goes back well over 15 years of locking people out of their accounts with no recourse for the user, not aware that said provider has a track record of doing so, in some cases without even giving an explanation why?
Were you not aware that the service you were relying on them for was critically important to you? Or were you unaware that the provider of this service has the capability to completely disable the service you're relying on with the simple flip of a switch?
I'm fascinated by this decision you've made - could you please explain the thought process by which you chose to use this service which you have no control over for critical things?"