It makes me think that it wouldn't be unreasonable to have regulation around blocking access to email. Google provides a number of services and seemingly, if you break the T&Cs on one of them, your entire account is disabled and you no longer have access to other Google services (including email).
I can't imagine not having access to my email - at this point I'm kind of locked in. Google keeps a lot of my passwords and I register all of my important accounts to my main gmail account. If Google were to close my account suddenly, it would certainly disrupt my life quite a bit.
Email grew into an essential part of modern life. Taking away access willy-nilly would distress most people. I understand that this is a free service and we're the product, but I believe companies should only offer email accounts knowing that access can be denied only in exceptional circumstances (e.g. abusing the email service directly).
If this investigation moves forward -- unlikely under a democratic government as we'll probably have -- one of the potential outcomes are better corporate firewalls.
If Google were broken up, a la baby bells, unusual activity on Youtube might no longer result in loss of email and phone service.
More like denying an identity. Online account services provide identity and freezing account for "abuse" is destroying part of it, with real world consequences.
It is true that horrible abusive people exist in real world, and maybe it is justifiable to flat out deny them, but account ban coming up on news stories aren't like that.
"I can't imagine not having access to my email - at this point I'm kind of locked in. Google keeps a lot of my passwords..."
That would worry me beyond belief. This is one of the reasons why I don't understand why people actually do it. To me, it's such an obvious problem and it's easily avoided.
(I use many of these services but they're outside Big Tech and I've no problem. For example, I use POP and IMAP email that's been around since the beginning of the internet.)
I can't imagine not having access to my email - at this point I'm kind of locked in. Google keeps a lot of my passwords and I register all of my important accounts to my main gmail account. If Google were to close my account suddenly, it would certainly disrupt my life quite a bit.
Email grew into an essential part of modern life. Taking away access willy-nilly would distress most people. I understand that this is a free service and we're the product, but I believe companies should only offer email accounts knowing that access can be denied only in exceptional circumstances (e.g. abusing the email service directly).