99% of people wouldn't dare taking Google to court, because they use Google services and if Google decides to close their accounts and stop doing business with them going forward, they stand to lose much more than the price of the device.
When I was the class representative in a class action law suit, during the deposition the very first thing the lawyer defending the company we were suing opened with "I want to assure you that you will continue to receive the very best service, and we will take no actions against you for exercising your rights. If you feel this is not being honored reach out to me directly. We take this very seriously." and handed me their card. Then we got down to the deposition.
For me personally them taking that action against me would have been a win win as it would have majorly increased my payout. This was a car dealer so I would just go to another mechanic. Or buy out of state. For google? I'd need to move some files and update a few companies on my address, I have alternate factors on the things I care about anyway.
Does it, though? Their ToS almost certainly allows them to close your account for no reason.
I made a support request to my bank recently and they decided to use the ToS to simply close my account instead of deal with the request which would have required a change to their immutable support script.
Their purpose is almost entirely to scare legally uninformed end users.
The real reason small claims is a bad idea is that this should be handled through a class action.
So you get 1 buck and teams of lawyers get 70 million?
Better to use small claims, at least you'll get thousands. And most small claims courts? No lawyers.
If everyone took google to small claims, it'd be the death of 1000 cuts for them.
Whistleblowers can't be fired from at-will employment for the similar reasons, i.e. massive legal exposure. Sure, an employee can be fired for no reason, but companies choose to settle (i.e. pay out a lot of money) instead of firing people outright if the situation can give the barest whiff of retaliation.
The classic example of this is race. You can not hire someone, or deny someone service, for no reason. You can't however not hire them, or deny them service, for the reason that they are black.
This is what I received:
"Additionally, we are electing to terminate your Cash App account (as allowed in our Terms of Service, section XIII.8). As a result of the termination of your Cash App account, you will no longer be able to use Cash App and its services going forward."
XIII.8. Termination of Account
We can terminate or deny you access to our services at any time, for any reason. You can also choose to deactivate your account at any time.
We may terminate these Cash App Terms or any Terms, or suspend or terminate your Account or your access to any Service, at any time for any reason, including a violation of the Terms. We may add or remove, suspend, stop, delete, discontinue or impose conditions on Services or any feature or aspect of a Service. We will take reasonable steps to notify you of termination or these other types of Service changes by email or at the next time you attempt to access your Account. You may also terminate the Cash App Terms applicable to your Account by deactivating your Account at any time.
1. Get discovery to gather further evidence
2. In the absence of a convincing rebuttal from Google ("he was sharing copyrighted movies via Google Drive, and per our policies we closed his account like we closed 1000 other peoples accounts. Our policy is exhibit A, the list of copyrighted movies he shared is exhibit B, the list of other similar accounts is exhibit C"), is probably enough to win a civil court case by itself.
The standard for civil cases is generally "on the balance of probabilities", not beyond a reasonable doubt like in criminal cases. Courts are allowed to rule on what seems like the likely reason that someone did something.
Disclaimer: Not a lawyer, bladdy blah blah, if you take this as legal advice your both a fool for not consulting a lawyer, and taking advice from someone on a topic where they themselves admitted that they don't know if Google is even prohibited from doing business with you in this hypothetical.
If they tried to do this you'd have a wonderful legal case against them if you so choose.
Antitrust law is very complicated because there's multiple different legal concepts in play. The punitive action response above is probably much better informed than my off the cuff one, and probably applies to this case moreso.
However, one principal test example I had in mind is if they close someone's Google Ads account.
For most businesses, removing the ability to advertise on Google would seriously impact their viability to compete with their competitors.
That's a classic example of Google being in a "market dominant position" vis a vis antitrust law.
Now the likely hood of this happening is close to zero. Because Google does NOT want to establish ANY sort of legal precedent ANYWHERE related to Google being in a market dominant position.
That would impact its business hugely.
There are plenty of other non-Google ad networks, they just aren’t as good. Facebook obviously stands out as an example. Amazon another. Same for email clients.
A regulator may see Google’s share in any of those markets and use that as evidence of monopoly power, but google bans plenty of people from using their services every day. I don’t think that’s the mechanism through which anyone can regulate them on anti-trust grounds.
And that's the shitty bit about our legal system: it's slow enough that the entity you're suing can keep hurting you for a long time until things get resolved, and it's incredibly expensive to get them resolved, especially if you're going against a company with deep pockets.
I do wonder, though, if, when you go to small claims court (where the advantage is tilted a bit toward the plaintiff), and in addition to asking for the value of the devices, you could also get the judge to issue an injunction against Google, prohibiting them from taking any retaliatory action, like closing your accounts. That might be out of scope for small claims court, though.
I'm still not sure you'd win any of this, though.
If 90% of people get a refund, then Lenovo will sue Google.
Also this is not a thing that can happen I think. Like for example epic vs Apple. Apple didn’t have the ability to close down all accounts of epic.
For an individual, tech companies can absolutely beat you over the head illegally and count on their better lawyers to make it stick. Unless you're Tim Sweeney level loaded I would recommend against trying it.
All of this is far from certain, and I would certainly understand someone not wanting to assume the risk. I definitely wouldn't. And that's yet another thing that sucks about this: Google isn't accountable here because they hold so much power over our digital lives.
Google assistant devices can't work with Alexa so that means buying a new device. All your "sign in with google" OAuth sites go.
It would be a major hassle to move away from Google, and I'm not even sure I'd even trust any other company to do all that anyway.
Google's business model is spying on you, so you can sortof trust they won't pull the major popular services as long as you play by the rules exactly. For an average person thay would seem to be the safest option. At least until recently, they've pulled more and more stuff lately.
Of course most Android users are more invested in the ecosystem than I am. I'm not sure I can create another account with the same phone number. I'm not going to buy an iPhone or an iPad so I'm not sure what I'll be going to do. Change number?
BTW not Linux phones, too many apps I need are not working there (especially banks.)
Not all that interested in spending $400 minimum on a phone(Or take my chances with something used), for something I can't develop for without paying even more money, that only allows WebKit based browsers, and doesn't use USB-C.
That's insanely expensive for a FOSS side project, if you're in embedded and controls and don't do any pro apps.
If it’s an open source project that’s not going to be on the App Store, you can get XCode for free to run an app on your own device and give others the source code.
Almost any modern app will run fine on an i5, 16GB or so GB of RAM, and an SSD. Nowhere near macbook costs.
You need something of about that tier for any pro development with any kind of modern tools, and there are iPhones out there that cost more than a decent laptop.
Plus, software resource demands seem to have leveled off. A Linux laptop is quite possibly going to be perfectly good for like 12 years.
Again, if you can afford a developer setup, $99/year is not a showstopper.
Not every developer works for FAANG . Some jobs rely heavily on in person work. And not everyone can drive. If you're making effectively minimum wage, $99 is a big deal.
Especially when Apple doesn't really seem to offer that much of anything aside from privacy(and mdns support) Android is great now, and iOS is way too locked down.
How many developers are making “minimum wage”?
The rich, people in a Mac dominated career, those who want to look rich, those who care much more about privacy than an average person, and people who sometimes think the world would be better if computers didn't exist.
60% of the US population isn’t “rich”. Even when I was selling cell phones back in 1996 at Radio Shack, the unsubsidized price of a cell phone was $300.
How much of a “status” is it to have something that 60% of the population has?
Google Assistant is far behind Amazon for home devices.
There is another little company that you might have heard of that sells phones that doesn’t depend on collecting data.
I also avoid using sign in with Google and use a service where I can “Hide my Email”.
Everything that Google does is a sub par user experience festered with ads
If you're rich, and really care about your privacy, it makes sense, but most people I know use Android.
Not sure where all these iOS users are, it must be regional or class-based or something
It's not like these are random hackers that can steal credit cards, that's not what they do.
There should be a lot more private tech available for those that need it, but for everyone else Apple is just too expensive for a protest unless privacy is on your shortlist of causes you really care about and prioritize.