Comments on: Google Groups Fail

By: Yawar

Yawar — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 04:26:18 +0000

By: Carl Cravens

Carl Cravens — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 23:55:58 +0000

Seth Godin recently used Google as an example when comparing companies that focus really hard on a few, high-paying customers, with companies that focus on a large number of low-paying customers. He points out that part of Google’s *strategy* is to let people fall through the cracks… Google Groups meets enough peoples’ needs that Google doesn’t need to care at all about the few that it doesn’t work out for. It actually *doesn’t pay* for them to give you real human support.

It’s the downside of the “free” model… it’s hard to complain about poor customer service or poor value when you didn’t pay anything for it to start with.

By: Simon

Simon — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:10:24 +0000

Google support for unpaid products is superb given the revenue they must make from them.

However if you want better support for Google Apps or Google mail you can pay for it.

Groups on the other hand seems to be largely done on a best effort basis.

Became all too aware of this when I had trouble logging into to my Google account and realized there is just a little too much of my life there protected by only a password, and that getting it straightened out if things went wrong would take 5 days plus.

Surely a LUG can find a mailing list home somewhere. The folks at lug.org.uk will do it if it is in the UK.

By: Adam

Adam — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 22:23:04 +0000

Also subscribing to Google Groups via email is very flaky, at best.

By: VE

VE — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:16:34 +0000

I almost came to the conclusion that no humans work at Google when my adsense account got “stuck” and didn’t issue any payouts for over six months. It got to the point where I was owed over $1000. I just kept posting to their forums over and over again until somebody noticed.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:41:19 +0000

I hate google groups. You can hardly control the automatic spam that occurs. For a small open group like a Lug, Perl Mongers, Ruby Group, etc. you want to be inviting and open but Google Groups just means that spammers spam your group and it can overshadow legitimate traffic.

This is when security through obscurity comes into play, it isn’t security but it is less annoying. Mailman isn’t bad.

By: Live-Point Official Blog » Blog Archive » Google Groups Fail | The Changelog

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 03:48:10 +0000

[...] See the rest here: Google Groups Fail | The Changelog [...]

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 02:08:37 +0000

That is true — for a personal site or a small business or organization, it is probably still a good option.

By: Tom Davies

Tom Davies — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 01:46:03 +0000

As a compromise, use Google Apps for email, with your own domain — then you can quickly switch to an alternative if needed.