Google Scares Me!

Andy Beal says: If you’re an avid Google user, you may wish to read this post sitting down. Chris Brogan documents the sorry tale of Nick Saber’s complete and utter denial by Google. After returning from lunch, Saber was unable to access his Gmail, Google Talk, Google Docs, or Picasa–and he was a paying Google customer!

When he tried to log in, he saw this message:

Sorry, your account has been disabled. [?]

When he contacted Google he received this reply:

Thank you for your report. We’ve completed our investigation. Because our
investigation was inconclusive, we are unable to return your account at
this time. At Google we take the privacy and security of our users very
seriously. For this reason, we’re unable to reveal any further information
about this account.

The good news is that, 30 hours later, Saber’s account is now back up and running. And, reading the comments, this could have been resolved much faster by calling Google’s support for paying customers. Still, the scares the heck out of me. My email, docs, calendar, instant messenger, analytics–just about everything–is hosted with Google.

I’ve already experienced first hand the pain of being shutout by Google, but this is a wake-up call to all of us that let some other company host our data. That company can shut you off without warning!

Scary, huh?

Original post: http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2008/08/google-can-will-shut-off-your-account-without-warning.html