Another case of the inherent vulnerability of centralized apps

In short:

You don't own it = you don't control it.

If your stuff is on someone else's turf, you have to realize that you are at an inherent disadvantage when conflict arises. They say possession is 9/10ths of the law. That is as true on the internet as it is in the "real world."

Consider Bob, who discovered that Google went and deleted his entire GMail account without warning.

...By then I sensed that something was terribly wrong, as the Google folks rarely took > 12 hours to fix such a problem. I accessed the Google Accounts page (www.google.com/accounts/), and saw the following message:

The account you attempted to access has been deleted. You may click here to sign up for a new account.

A nightmare come true?! I tried logging into my Google Account via www.google.com/accounts/Login but was presented with an invalid username/password error.

I tried to reset my password, and my suspicions were confirmed when I saw the following:

There are no accounts in our system with the E-mail address usermame@gmail.com which you entered.

When he got Google to investigate, their response was rather underwhelming:

Hello,

Thank you for your report.

We have investigated this issue, but because the results were inconclusive, we're not able to provide further assistance.

Gmail takes the privacy and security of our users very seriously. For this reason, we can't reveal any further information about this account.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, and thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

The Google Team

On a carryover thread, Jim asks:

This is a weird suggestion, but... have you tied going through consumer advocates, such as Consumer Reports, the BBB or even better one of those "Channel 7 On Your Side!" news features where the news reporter will help investigate the problem and hopefully get the issue resolved?

Often big companies won't listen to one person, unless that one person has a major news organization backing him up ready to write a story about it.

And there's the rub. How much clout does one person have against a megacorporation?

In the same thread, several people point out that GMail is free, and therefore Bob has no cause to complain. I disagree. For one thing, GMail isn't free: the user has to give up a degree of privacy to allow Google to place targeted ads into their email. Second, free services offered to the public should be at the very least reliable. It's not like GMail is open source, supported by volunteers. If you're saying, "Here's something to replace your other thing," and then it doesn't perform to minimal requirements (such as no arbitrary deletions of all material), well, there's a problem.

To be sure, any system can fail. But it's something else when the problem is a conflict of intention.

Hat tip: Hawk Wings, my favorite source of Apple Mail tips, who points to an essential part of the Google terms of service:

We may modify or terminate our services from time to time, for any reason, and without notice, including the right to terminate with or without notice, without liability to you, any other user or any third party. We reserve the right to modify these Terms of Service from time to time without notice…

…Google disclaims any and all responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, completeness, legality, reliability, or operability or availability of information or material displayed in the GOOGLE SERVICES results. Google disclaims any responsibility for the deletion, failure to store, misdelivery, or untimely delivery of any information or material.

That's "Do no evil" in legalese.