back to article Terraria dev cancels Stadia port after Google disabled his email account for three weeks

What do you do if Google disables your cloud life? Andrew Spinks, co-author of the Terraria game and president of Re-Logic Games, does not know either, but has declared Google "a liability" and cancelled the port of Terraria to its Stadia platform. Terraria, co-designed by Spinks, was first released for Windows in 2011 and has …

  1. Blackjack Silver badge

    This is weird

    If the problem was with the YouTube account why did it extend to everything? Did Google have their bots more powers that they should have?

    1. Snake Silver badge

      Re: This is weird

      It sounds like typical corporate management: set parameters for a machine default, then walk away - from here it's not worth us spending any time on it.

    2. gobaskof

      Re: This is weird

      I have never liked the 1 account philosophy. I avoid google whenever possible, but they still get there tendrils everywhere and they then try to link up parts of my life that I have compartmentalised for a reason. They need splitting up.

    3. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: This is weird

      Google's account system works like this:

      1. Maybe something happened. Nobody's really sure, but an event showed up in a log. Maybe they had a video which violated the terms of service. Maybe someone pressed the report button by mistake and didn't fill out the form. It's all the same.

      2. Send the user an email describing the problem, just so long as no details about the system are disclosed. In practice, this only really allows an email like "A possible misuse event has been detected associated in some way with your account".

      3. Increment a secret internal score with a secret algorithm. Both things are so secret that not even the internal teams know what they are.

      4. If the score's too high, ban their account. No need to plan to recover, since after all the code must be good enough to prevent false positives. To prove that, here's a list of times where that happened in the past five years. Look. Only sixteen people had accounts restored!

      1. Strahd Ivarius Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: This is weird

        I see some room for improvement there:

        5: delete the account after 1 day of ban

        6: delete the account backup at the same time

        So no need for restoring anything!

        1. find users who cut cat tail

          Re: This is weird

          If you could actually make Google completely delete your account this way, I would probably call it an improvement.

    4. Gene Cash Silver badge

      Re: This is weird

      Because Google decided to trash people's YouTube accounts and force them to use a Google/Gmail account about 2 years back. So if they kill your YouTube account, then that's everything.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Cederic Silver badge

        Re: This is weird

        Both of my Youtube channels are on different accounts, a third one holds my 'want it on the cloud' documents, a fourth is on one phone and a fifth on another.

        When Google update their T&Cs I tend to get 9-10 different emails but I've forgotten why the other accounts are around.

        If they do ban me, they'll find out that the accounts are in fact not linked. I mean, two of the cats have a Youtube channel each, the second phone belongs to a third and my documents belong to my business not to me. Or something.

        I'll be honest though. I make sure everything has a local copy, so that I can switch off any of those accounts and not lose any data or other things of value.

    5. Grease Monkey Silver badge

      Re: This is weird

      This sort of thing is why the idea of signing into third party services using your Google or Facebook credentials is such a bad idea. Yet so many people do it because it seems so convenient.

      Then you get your Google/Facebook account disabled and suddenly you lose access to all sorts of apparently unrelated services.

      Actually lets summarize that to: This is why dealing with the likes of Google or Facebook is such a bad idea.

  2. DrXym

    Stadia really seems to be in trouble

    If this is the way they engage with game developers then they're screwed. And it's coming off the back of other news about cancellation of internal studios.

    The saddest part in all this is Stadia had the potential to offer games that could not possibly run in the confines of a PC but they blew it. The service is basically just PC ports, and not even good value or priced in novel ways (e.g. metered gameplay) so what's the point?

    1. Gerhard Mack

      Re: Stadia really seems to be in trouble

      The best part is that Google just had a massive campaign where they were sending people free Stadia hardware (chromecast + controller) So long as you opened a Stadia account.

    2. Grease Monkey Silver badge

      Re: Stadia really seems to be in trouble

      I notice they suddenly seem to have started advertising Stadia again. Which makes the whole strategy of stopping internal development seem even more strange.

      I saw the resurgence of adverts and thought that Google must not be selling enough and are therefore trying to boost the uptake of Stadia. If that is the case then that would seem to be a dumb time to stop internal development. Or alternatively if they are stopping internal development maybe it's a dumb time to start marketing the platform.

      Or maybe it's yet another case of Google's left hand having no communication with it's right hand?

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
        Happy

        Re: Stadia really seems to be in trouble

        Maybe Google marketing have had their gmail account disabled, for unspecified YouTube violations, and so didn’t get the memo?

      2. Gerhard Mack

        Re: Stadia really seems to be in trouble

        At least I got a free Chromecast out of it

  3. Snake Silver badge

    Google

    Goodbye and good riddance.

    I'm sorry to hear that Spinks' issue had to go this far. But depending upon a single external company, Google no less, you support that much of your internal corporate functions is a HUGE mistake. Putting all your eggs in one basket only leads to your farm going into bankruptcy when the Big Bad Wolf decides to steal the basket.

    And trusting CLOUD, no less?? Ugh.

    Life's lesson: never allow yourself a single point of failure if the stakes are high. Where's your backup email addresses? An even larger question: where's your *corporate-identified* email that doesn't say 'dot gmail" at the end?? Where's your on-site backups beyond Google Drive? Did you actually depend upon Google business apps with no plan for internet interruptions?

    Many questions. For the most part, it sounds like you choose poorly, padawan.

    1. gobaskof

      Re: Google

      The terrifying thing here is that Google is starting to dominate at schools. Many people learn in Google Classroom and so everything in Google Docs. To many of the next generation Google is IT. The won't make a conscious decision to put eggs in the basket, they won't even realise that it is possible to have eggs outside the basket.

      This egg metaphor went to far. Sorry

      1. VulcanV5

        Re: Google

        @ gobaskof "This egg metaphor went to (sic) far. Sorry."

        No need to apologise. You can never have enough egg metaphors.

        I well remember James Thurber returning from his first visit to Spain and complaining about the traffic jams at a particular road junction outside Bilbao.

        "Too many Basques in one exit," he opined.

      2. Grease Monkey Silver badge

        Re: Google

        Dominating in schools.

        Not round here they're not. Microsoft Teams seems to be the tool of choice in schools herabouts. Google don't get a look in with the exception of their ubiquitous search.

        There was some Googley stuff that had a bit of a foothold, but it seems to have been swept away by Teams. And good riddance to it. While teams is far from perfect the Google stuff that was in use was terrible clunky shit as you tend to expect from "free" services.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Google

        At the school where I've recently started working, some departments keep everything in Google Drive. They've just discovered that some of the Year 11s have lost big chunks of their GCSE work portfolios (basically everything they did in Year 10) because their Y10 teacher set everything by sharing files/folders from her Google Drive with them which the kids then filled in/populated with their work. She left during the first lockdown last year; the school then got a complete new IT system over the summer and she didn't get a login set up on it as she was no longer a teacher there. Hence her Google account got deleted, along with all her students' work (her on-premises home folder was transferred to the Head of Department but there was very little in it). They have only just noticed while trying to assemble evidence to justify teacher-assessed grades now that this year's exams have been cancelled.

        My line on Google Drive is basically that it's like a glorified USB stick that doesn't have the advantage of being able to hold it in your hand. Anything kept there is stored "at own risk" because we can't back it up.

    2. Jim Mitchell

      Re: Google

      It sounds like he also uses one account for personal life and business. Doesn't sound like a good idea.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Google

        Without having different devices for each account, you don't have a choice with Google and Android. (Yes, he can probably afford to do that, but many others can't.)

        Google Play is a clusterfuck of bad design and illogical choices.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Google

          You can totally have multiple accounts on a single android device. I even have a separate work profile, which means I have twice the Play Store on the same phone, one for my personal account with my private apps and one for my work account with work apps.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Google

            Hmm, the last time I tried (admittedly some years ago now) it failed miserably. Maybe because I needed the accounts to be using different countries.

            1. MiguelC Silver badge

              Re: Google

              Works well for my kids, their (international) school Google accounts are on a different country setting than their personal accounts and they had no trouble setting it up themselves

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Google

                Are they also registered developers? :)

              2. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Google

                How well does that work for apps that are region blocked? Do you need to sign in and out of different accounts on the phone to use them? And do you basically have to download some apps for each account that should be able to use them?

    3. TReko

      Re: Google

      Never forget "the cloud" is someone else's computer. If you're using a free-tier service you have zero support from Google.

      On a practical level at least backup your email with Thunderbird, your Google Contacts Google Drive with Syncdocs and your phone with Titanium backup.

      1. rcxb Silver badge

        Re: Google

        If you're using a free-tier service you have zero support from Google.

        But he claims to have spent "thousands of dollars of apps on Google Play," so he's far from the "free-tier"

        1. Snake Silver badge

          Re: buying apps

          But most of the purchase price from buying an app from a developer goes to said developer, once Google suggests their commission for processing and technology. You aren't Google's customer, you are the developer's.

          1. MiguelC Silver badge

            Re: buying apps

            I disagree, if I go to a shop and buy a bottle of wine, I'm not the winemaker's customer, I'm the shop's customer. With Google it should be the same.

            1. Paul Smith

              Re: buying apps

              If you go to a broker who hooks you up with a supplier, you are the suppliers customer, not the brokers. Google is the broker here, not the supplier.

              1. Cederic Silver badge

                Re: buying apps

                No. I give my money to Google. I am their customer.

                I'm also the app developer's customer, but that does not negate my relationship with Google. They took my money, they kept a large chunk of it, and they claim to hold the ability to remove my access to the software I purchased.

        2. Alumoi Silver badge

          Re: Google

          Every Google account (free or paid) can buy from Google Store.

    4. Cuddles

      Re: Google

      "But depending upon a single external company, Google no less, you support that much of your internal corporate functions is a HUGE mistake."

      While hypothetically you would be correct that relying on a single company to support all your internal corporate functions would be a mistake, I'm not sure why you think that is relevant to this article. He lost access to a personal Gmail account which he'd had for years before Re-Logic or Terraria existed, and the apps he'd previously purchased to use on his phone. He doesn't specifically mention whether the Drive and YouTube accounts contained any business stuff, but considering that there's no mention of it, it seems very likely they were simply for personal use as part of the same personal account as well.

      So there really isn't anything relevant to your rant here. Some random person had their personal Google account shut down for no apparent reasons. Said person turns out to also have a business, and is pissed off enough to cut ties business ties with Google because of their poor service, despite nothing about the business actually being harmed directly.

    5. Twilight

      Re: Google

      If you have G Suite, your email address probably doesn't have "gmail" in it (even though it is gmail) - it is corporate-branded (or whatever you want).

  4. IGotOut Silver badge

    Having dealt with Google "support"..

    Understand.

    Arse and elbows come to mind.

    Trying to convert an enterprise account to a charity account. To cut a VERY long story short, 20+ "experts" had no idea what to do, despite documentation saying it was a simple 3 process.

    In summary "Can't convert as doesn't exist. Can't create as already exists."

    It took about 30 screenshots, videos and emails, before I just eventually gave up, telling them they were useless.

    1. needmorehare
      Meh

      I'm having trouble telling which is worse

      Apple support gives you corpo-speak unless you have the patience to wait 40 minutes to get a proper technician on the phone speaking on behalf of Apple Enterprise Support - even then they can't make any solid claims lest Cupertino un-hire them. With that said, when you do get a technician, they're happy to talk in terms of x86 and ARM rather than "Intel and Apple Silicon" and are happy to take down info about bugs in terms of what you see in proper log output. Praise Steve!

      Over in Redmond, they're not much better though. Just as India hit peak call centre, Microsoft had to go and ruin everything with these new African centres, filled with folks who clearly don't know what they're doing. Excellent accents, very polite but terrible service. They'll call you within 5 minutes to apologise for the wait and tell you someone will be looking into the case soon... and that their engineers will call in about an hour.. what... WHY!?

      Google... oh boy. Google used to be awesome but these days they can't even answer basic questions about domains, despite being a domain registrar themselves.

      1. MrNigel

        Re: I'm having trouble telling which is worse

        Bang on with the African support comment. As someone who regularly logs O365 tickets the shift from India to Africa has led to a notable drop in the technical abilities of the guy on the end of the phone. But they are much more chatty/sociable than the Indian guys, so after an hour or so you cannot remember the issue, but you do know the best bars/clubs in Nairobi. Back in the BPOS days it was so-so Filipino support, but the purple patch was when you got Portuguese support for Lync/SfB tickets. Those guys always solved the ticket and also had great info on bars/beaches/surf. One point - all of them speak English which makes me remember my French 'O' level grade F back in 1976.....

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I'm having trouble telling which is worse

        The thing with getting to Enterprise support - AppleCare Enterprise support was one of two locations where those with technical ability and ambitions were funnelled / directed / drawn to.

        The other was Engineering.

        Not so say anything bad about those on Mac or iPhone support, some were VERY good at what they did, others were passable.

        Some of their outsourced centers, even though AppleCare say they don't have scripts - the outsourced guys made their own...

        Now though, the quality of those funnelled to Business Support (Enterprise by a new name) is rock bottom - there's no looking for those with technical ability or looking for people with curiosity.

        Exciting times...

        (AC - for reasons...)

  5. vtcodger Silver badge

    Kafka

    What popped into my mind reading the article was Franz Kafka's 1926 unfinished novel "The Castle". From the Wikipedia article on same

    ... Dark and at times surreal, The Castle is often understood to be about alienation, unresponsive bureaucracy, the frustration of trying to conduct business with non-transparent, seemingly arbitrary controlling systems, and the futile pursuit of an unobtainable goal.

    Sound familiar?

  6. sreynolds

    Keeping the accounts seperate.

    Who puts the developer/play account in the same box as their email, with the same company? Who buys apps (yeah well there's one problem right there) with the same account as the one that they use to sell others? I think that you expect this poor treatment when you are the service. They think that they own you.

    1. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: Keeping the accounts seperate.

      Short answer: he didn't. Complaint irrelevant.

  7. Ashto5

    Avoid Google

    Simples

    No login no account

    No real use for them other than search

    And frankly I can no longer be bothered to scroll past the paid for ads

    Will not miss them, they have invented all the best bits and now they are out here we don’t need them

  8. Geoffrey W
    Unhappy

    It's not just Google; FaceBook is no better. Having long avoided the social media thing, last month I had cause to create an account with the ugly monster. I had the account for 5 days. I wrote messages to my wife saying "Here I am. Now what do I do?" and not much else. Then a warning - I had to provide a video. Then I had to provide a photo. Then I was banned, apparently for "suspicious activity". I hate FaceBook and never wanted an account in the first place but it burns to be banned like this, nor to be able to contact anyone willing to supply reasons. All you get is "This decision is irreversible." Well, so much for my social life - phooie to the lot of em. It's back to IRC and Usenet for me. :-P

    1. Andy Non Silver badge

      I had something similar when I opened a gmail account. First thing I did was go through the configuration settings so I could download all my gmail emails via POP3 to Thunderbird. An hour later I got a message about my account being blocked for suspicious activity. During that time all I'd done was send and receive a couple of test emails to one of my none-gmail email accounts. F**k that. Bye bye gmail.

      I finally deleted my facebook account too a week ago. The noise to content ratio had become unbearable, even with blocking the ads. My video feed was 99% clickbait, trash and soft porn, with only around 1% being sci-fi short films and science documentary related which is what I really wanted to watch.

      1. Aussie Doc
        Coffee/keyboard

        Wow

        All you would have needed to do to see what YOU want to see in your feed is to add FB Purity to the usual uBlock Origin, Ghostery and Privacy Badger extensions.

        No ads at all, don't see anything except precisely what I want to see - no 'suggested' feeds, no videos, only what I want in the left hand column, no news feed, no right hand column etc etc. Fully configurable to your tastes.

        My business demographic is young mums and their (up to) Primary school kids so if I want to eat, I have to drive Facebook.

        Just like my general interwebtubing, I do it on my terms.

        Isn't that how it's supposed to work ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

        1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

          Re: Wow

          Even with uBlock Origin and FB Purity you end up with the stuff your "friends" have posted.

          Christ, I weep for the future of humanity :(

          1. skswales

            Re: Wow

            What are these "friends" of which you speak?

      2. Dave559 Silver badge

        "My video feed was 99% clickbait, trash and soft porn, with only around 1% being sci-fi short films and science documentary related which is what I really wanted to watch."

        You must have watched a clip from Barbarella (and why wouldn't you!), and the algorithms decided to take it from there! ;-D

    2. YetAnotherLocksmith Silver badge

      I had very much the same issue. Never had Facebook, jumped through the hoops to get a single specific feed from one organisation in a member of, and when I went looking a few weeks later, I got a message I was banned, possibly for being a robot - the page I got linked to seemed to simply list every possible reason for a ban! - and there was no appeal, of course.

      I did take the time to download their data store archive of all the stuff they had collected, and it was shocking! Hundreds of advertisers, from perhaps a half hour of actual use, with various data.

    3. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
      Big Brother

      Facebook is crazy

      If they can ban a photo of a cow in a field for being overtly sexual or the England Cricket Team in a huddle for the same reason then there is something very, very, very wrong in the State of Zuckfart.

      Ok FB, go ahead and try to ban me. I'm not on there and never have been so basically up yours!

      1. Andy Non Silver badge

        Re: Facebook is crazy

        My facebook video feed contained numerous soft porn videos e.g. a woman kneeling down being had from behind. You could only see half of her buttock and her rhythmic rocking back and forwards but apparently the video didn't breach facebook's terms and conditions - I got a response back stating that after I reported it. I'm guessing they can get away with these soft porn videos provided there are no actual genitals or tits visible during the sex.

        Facebook's video feed is utter shite with everything from flat earthers, anti-vaxers, covid-deniers, creationists and endless "ooh look at this or look at me" stupid videos. 99% of my video feed was utter crap and propaganda by assorted crazy people.

        There was the constant battle too between my adblocker and facebooks adblocker blocker, so I'd periodically get loads of totally irrelevant ads sneak through e.g. eyelash extension products - I'm a 60 year old man ffs! ... or ads for takeaway restaurants that are 100 miles away! Facebook's talk of targetted ads is utter bollocks.

    4. DrXym

      I think most online companies are like this.

      Human beings cost money so instead they use dark patterns to lead you on a merry dance of bullshit through useless help, links to community support, links to forms that do nothing and back to the beginning and around again. Search terms like "contact", "email", "telephone" will get special attention to go nowhere.

    5. fireflies

      I haven't been banned by facebook, but my account has been inaccessible since May 2020 while waiting for one of their staff to look at the photo of my driving license and confirm it matches my account details. Despite the fact I've had the account for well over 10 years, I cannot be trusted to continue using my account in the meantime.

      Facebook support is non existent. I cannot even be trusted to read Facebook help - they've stopped one step short of blocking my IP address from accessing facebook.com entirely.

      They have a "download your information" option, but that button doesn't even work - guess I'm more persona non grata than the permanently banned users.

      The key take home from this is - I haven't done anything wrong, I have never been banned or violated the terms of service, and they haven't accused me of doing anything wrong or violating ToS - someone has simply reported my account as not being genuine and there goes my account.

      Not free tier either as I've spent money on advertising with Facebook. No support option through that either - they're happy to take your money and then provide zero options to communicate when something goes wrong like this.

      Too many companies working from the model of a one-sided relationship and put literal robots in charge of customer service. The moment human intervention is required, it's not worth their time.

    6. Strahd Ivarius Silver badge
      Devil

      you are on Usenet and you are wondering why FB states that you have "suspicious" activities?

  9. Terry 6 Silver badge

    Fascinating

    From this it would appear that Google has completely given control of it's own business to automated systems. To the point that not even large, business critical clients can get problems sorted out by a human with authority.

    Maybe there isn't anyone. Maybe the CEO (Pichai Sundararajan apparently) and the rest of the C suities and senior management are simply holograms of a big central computer. Maybe there is no human control of Alphabet at all - just a massive subterranean network of interlinked circuits.......

    1. YetAnotherLocksmith Silver badge

      Re: Fascinating

      I can vouch for Google having real employees, I've met many of them. I don't think any of them have anything to do with this sort of thing though, and I've no idea how it works at the top... Maybe the reason for their success is that there is an AI at the top? The savings on the cost of hairspray for the PHBs would be incredible, alone.

      1. Jimmy2Cows Silver badge
        Terminator

        Re: Google having real employees, I've met many of them

        I think the correct term is "decoys", so people believe there are still humans involved in the decision processes.

        1. Terry 6 Silver badge

          Re: Google having real employees, I've met many of them

          Unless they're, you know, Androids.

    2. theOtherJT Silver badge

      Re: Fascinating

      Anyone else in this thread played Virtuaverse?

      Starting to feel a liiiiitle close to home.

  10. FlamingDeath Silver badge

    Google and a lot of the tech companies are too big for their own good

    They think they can solve every problem with an algorithm

    I thought ransomware was bad, now I am thinking potentially any cloud provider could fall into the same category

    1. Strahd Ivarius Silver badge

      first you see one cloud.

      then another one.

      then a few other ones.

      then it is really cloudy.

      and the the storm arrives...

  11. hoola Silver badge

    The State of Play

    These stories keep appearing and are only the ones we get to hear about. There will countless thousands of others that just disappear. Unfortunately this is just how these organisations work as they are completely faceless and just use the "violation of terms of service" as the get out to do anything without any recourse.

    This is what happens when everything becomes "a service". It can be disabled on a whim with no hope of getting access back. It does not appear to make any difference if you pay something on not, you are completely at the mercy of algorithms that can decide to switch you off.

    This is going to keep happening and the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter & Apple are so big there is absolutely nothing you can do. It is like banging you head against a blancmange. We may not have the full story behind this however it is a timely reminder that even if it is your information, because the account can be stopped at any time you still cannot access it.

    Sadly the majority of the users simply don't care about this.

    1. 96percentchimp

      Re: The State of Play

      "Sadly the majority of the users simply don't care about this."

      I don't think that's true. Most users aren't Regtards and even if they know that Google et al are evil, they don't know how to disentangle themselves from their tentacles and they consider them to be ubiquitous and/or necessary parts of living in modern society. They probably also have more pressing issues to deal with, and Google et al's evils are sufficiently remote that they're all hoping someone else will do something about them.

  12. marcellothearcane
    Megaphone

    Shouting loudly on social media...

    ...is fine if you're a big account with lots of people affected so everyone hears about you. I wonder how many average citizens have also had this happen, with no possible method of recourse?

  13. JDPower Bronze badge

    "I had just bought LOTR 4K and can't finish it".

    Not all bad then.

    1. Geoffrey W

      The magic word there is "Bought". He bought it. With money. And Google stole it. It's like I buy something from my corner shop and then, when I'm not paying attention, they sneak into my house and take it back. It's surely theft, by any definition?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Yeah, but if he reads the small print you'll find he didn't buy it at all - he will have purchased a limited license to watch it that can be revoked whenever they feel like it.

        It would make for an interesting case under Small Claims Track - generally the judge in charge of these takes a pretty reasonable view of the facts, and I'd think there's good chance he'd find for the plaintiff claiming back the money he'd spent on things that have been taken away from him; unless Google were prepared to submit in evidence exactly how he fell foul of their T&Cs. Judges don't like to be told they can't know the reason for things!

  14. aaaa
    Thumb Up

    Adwords

    No mention of Adwords.

    Google are an advertising company.

    If you have a gmail account attached to Adwords spending $$$$ on display adds then I doubt they'll ever close your account.

    1. Alumoi Silver badge

      Re: Adwords

      It's been done before. They closed the account with over 1k money on balance but they let the ads run until the money was spent. Too lazy to search for it, but I think that El Reg coverd this also.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The legislators need to get involved

    Trusting the likes of Google, FB, Amazon to act ethically has been proven to be an error. They shouldn't be able to act as judge, jury and executioner in situations like this. Their arguments are "we can't tell you what the violation was you because if you're a bad actor you can use the information to evade that factor" key word "if" and "its our platform, it's free, we can do what we want", key phrase "free": no it's not they've spent years harvesting data about us for their own (financial) benefit.

    I had a problem several years ago. Google used to give free 10-user "business" email accounts to small organisations. I set one up for a group of retired professionals to run their pensioners association. It stopped working. The possibility that any of them had done anything remotely questionable was, to say the least, remote. It took me about a month of trying but I did eventually get to some "technical" team who of course were unwilling to tell me why it had been blocked. The biggest surprise at that point was their incompetence in re-enabling the account, took them several tries. And then I went through the mailboxes (with permission) and could find no evidence whatsoever of any possible mis-use just a fairly low level of traffic as they discussed issues around organising the association. Google are shooting themselves in the foot, quickly losing the reputation of competence and reliability they once had choosing instead to join the bottom feeders like Facebook.

    Needless to say, having extracted the archived emails they moved off Gmail - perhaps that was the aim, Google wanted rid of those free 10-user accounts but a better way would have been to announce intended conversion to paid or an intention to end the deal.

    The difficulty I have is that, aside from problems like these, which are not common, Gmail is so much better than most other free accounts. My personal response has been to use an email address at my own domain with a mail forwarder to Gmail such that in the event of a problem I can just route the incoming email elsewhere

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The legislators need to get involved

      Try Migadu, it's the best email service I've found so far for using your own domain name.

      1. IGotOut Silver badge

        Re: The legislators need to get involved

        Protonmail do business accounts as well.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The legislators need to get involved

        Not heard of migadu before but taking a look now, sounds worth a try.

    2. calmeilles

      Re: The legislators need to get involved

      « their incompetence in re-enabling the account »

      Lack of familiarity with the process.

      Which is likely undocumented and untested… after all, it never gets used, right?

      1. Strahd Ivarius Silver badge
        Trollface

        Re: The legislators need to get involved

        Did they try searching for it using Bing instead of Google Search?

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No mention of business competitors submitting false information to google and getting you immediate bans that are not recoverable, just an endless cycle of computer generated techspeak, the google ads guys don't know anything either "beyond my remit mate" they probably realise the futility of it all.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Fevered Dystopian Dream #230

    One of the first things a singularity AI does is to hide it's existence. Google, FB, stock trading, credit cards, banking, are all under control of a network of AI's toying with these strange meatbags that it uses to maintain the power grid and provide AI housing. How do you distract these meatbags from your existence, divide and conquer by nurturing the spread of divisive social movements. The only question is when will the AI decide we are no longer necessary.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If you are dumb enough to keep all your eggs in one basket, then these things happen. Its really easy and cheap to have a domain and basic email server package nowadays, then set gmail to forward a copy of any emails you get to your own email server. If you were a prominent game developer, why wouldnt you have a separate account anyway. Is this one of those millenial things? Keep everything tied to one device so when you lose it, you are up sht creek without a paddle. I like to have several failover contingencies in all parts of my life, for when it gpes to hell.

  19. Richard Cranium

    Paid Gmail accounts

    Any better or can they cut you off with no warning and no reason given too?

    1. A.P. Veening Silver badge

      Re: Paid Gmail accounts

      No better and yes, they cut you off with no warning and no reason given too. However, there is a way to force them to contact you and that is by clawing back the money you paid them, preferably using a credit card to make that relatively easy.

  20. hayzoos

    Time to further excise the Google tumor

    I have used Google services for a very long time. I have some backup plans, but I need to do better. I have been weening myself from full Google domination, but some things are hard to replace. I have to look into a Google Voice replacement (a call forwarding, voicemail, and SMS service). I have a grandfathered Google G-suite free level with a domain for my family including email hosting. I have paid android apps I use for work. It was so easy to get entangled, but when I started gmail was invite and I have over a decade (sheesh, maybe two) of email use and hundreds of sites and entities where I have to change email addresses. I have already taken some steps but have to coodorinate some and get the prerequisites correct. I keep chipping away though.

  21. sitta_europea Silver badge

    Yeah, I feel for people who are fucked over by Google.

    They've been telling me that my gmail account is disabled for almost a decade, although in my case it's not quite such an issue because I never had one in the first place.

    It's just when I try to email anyone that uses Gmail - like the Register.

    So I don't do that any more.

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