Google isn't doing this out of the goodness of their heart. They're expecting to make money off of every signup in some way. Directly or indirectly. If they want to continue their dominant status, then they should be responsive in some way to their users.

Sure, they have the right to cut off users any time they like. But it's ultimately self-destructive. Once trust is lost, it's difficult to regain it. I've moved away from my Google dependencies as much as I can, and have urged friends and family to do so as well. I'm only influential with around two dozen people, but once you start multiplying people like me by the millions, then Google has a problem.

And I'd argue it's at least a little immoral. Their services, especially Gmail, were set up in a way to make users highly dependent upon them. Google wanted that dependency for their path to near-monopoly status. To suddenly cut them off without the option of support or a clean exit creates real world chaos as the users try to pick up the pieces. Your email address might not be used much socially these days, but it's crucial for business contacts. For logins and customer interactions. The loss of it can cause serious damage. Google may not be legally responsible for the damage caused by a user's loss of their free services, but they're arguably morally responsible. Maybe they should pop up a warning to everyone using Gmail: "Don't rely on us. We're not going to do anything to help you if you can't use it one day."

Why do you assume Google is rational?

Or more precisely: Why do you think any outsider could understand Google's rational?

History is littered with the corpses of successful companies that lost their way.

Today's Google reminds me of General Motors. Utterly dominant, untouchable. But needed to keep making more money. So they bring auto loan financing in house, GMAC. Woot, more money. But they forgot how to make money making cars. So upstarts ate their lunch.

It's a rough analog. Maybe IBM is closer.

The point is Google's rolling in cash despite their antipathy towards their end users (note that I did not say "customers"). Which will continue to be fine, until it isn't. And then it'll be too late.

We do not pay for a home address, and yet people can still reach us there. Email is just as important as physical mail -- the problem is that the economic model changed. This means there is no incentive to maintain service, even though (in my mind) in the modern era an email address is possibly more important to a person for day-to-day communication.

> We do not pay for a home address

What? You don't pay paxes in your country? No rent to the owner of your house or paid for owning the house yourself? What country is that?

I mean we do not pay the USPS or FedEx or UPS, etc. to agree to send mail to our address. I was making a comparison between mail and email services. Hopefully this clarifies what I meant.

Still makes no sense. We do not pay mail-providers for the address alone, but mainly for running the servers which deliver and store the mails. Which is the same for which USPS/Fedex/UPS/etc. are paid for.

You want a mail-address? Grab your own domain (thus pay "tax"), put a server there (build a "house") and you are there. Getting an address, be it physical or digital never comes for free, and there is not human right for having one.

Alright, then I take back what I said in my parent comment about how "we don't pay for a home address". I'll concede that we do pay for a home address.

However, that doesn't change the fact that the economic model has changed when it comes to email. We no longer pay with money, but we pay in other ways when we use Google. So it's actually worse than with mail, because there used to be a clear exchange of goods but it is now obfuscated. And thus, there is nothing mandating good service, which is why people can be randomly banned from using it.

This makes the case for USPS to provide email services.

Email should be something provided by the government, like the postal service. So should your Internet.

Why should people have to pay money for a product to expect fair treatment? Is an exchange of services without money not subject to rules and regulations? Google chooses not to charge people because they've found it more beneficial to offer many of them for free. It's a model many tech companies have followed to great success. That doesn't mean they should have free reign to do whatever they please.

> Is an exchange of services without money not subject to rules and regulations?

A contract without consideration is not a valid contract. There are a few laws in some places that require companies to provide service outside of a contractual service agreement, but those are typically limited to public utilities, emergency services, etc.

GP said without money, not without consideration. Google derives a great deal of value by having your attention and data in its various products. The fact that users exchange attention and data rather than dollars doesn't give Google the right to stomp all over them.

> Google derives a great deal of value by having your attention and data

They do. But does their ToS say that your data and attention is consideration for use of their services? I do not believe it does. In fact, it says:

> You have no obligation to provide any content to our services

Throughout their terms, I don't see anything that implies an obligation of exchange.

There are certainly other rights that exist... But contractual rights to a service is not a right you'd have without a valid contract.

You can sue your caterer if they run out of food, but not the soup kitchen.

People pay with their data. It suits Google very well. If they were able to make billions, lest they could do is to have a proper customer service. I see them now as a company exploiting their customers in every way possible and then giving them a middle finger if there is any problem they experience. It should not be legal to respond to customer issues with bots or people not trained to deal with specific requests. If this means customers would have to pay extra, I am fine with that.

People pay when google steals their data.

I say “steal”, because they are not opt-in.

Also, there is no comprehensive opt-out. I cannot tell their ad networks to stop tracking all the devices I own.

(They have a page for stopping tracking of things I use my Google account for. That doesn’t count: They track me even when I am not logged into Google, and even on devices that cannot log into Google.)

Also, I can’t delete my gmail accounts. They were issued by third parties that decided to outsource email to Google.

There is nothing consensual about my use of Google services. I shouldn’t be bound by their EULA. I’m sure the courts would disagree.

I've heard bad stories from people that did pay for Google services. It seems they only get slightly less contempt (and maybe a phone number).

If you signup for an account you are not a customer in your view?

In google's view if I accept the terms google will treat me as a customer internally and using that relationship will sell my data.

Is google not in a legal position to do this?

The acceptance of the terms creates a customer relationship

The thing is - google makes more per user than users are willing to pay for google services. Also, their totaling vertical integration makes things hard to disentangle. If Google were to introduce paying subscription tomorrow (just shooting, 60 USD per month), what what I would be paying? Youtube? Search? Everything? What if I were willing to drop youtube and just pay for search?

> How many people pay for google services?

Everyone pays with their data and the ads they and others are seeing. Just because you pay no cash, does not mean ther is no payment at all.

Addtionally, it's used to be quite hard to even pay in cash for googles services. Though, this changde in the last years, as there is now youtube premium and google one. But still not possible for all their services.

More than enough ,Please check average revenue per user figurs of Google at such a large scale. They are one of the most profitable companies. We are paying by our data, actual money using value added services (google one etc.) It is very bad to say that we have no leg to complain.