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Comment by epicureanideal | Hacker News Reader

Maybe the next million new jobs is just rebuilding a reasonable level of customer support at all tech companies, funded by modest usage fees. $5/mo, $50/yr, or $500 for lifetime guaranteed permanent access so no lockouts are possible, I would definitely pay for Gmail or an equivalent service. And there are people who I’m sure would pay much more.

Another short term option: $500-1000 right now to get a couple hours of support to unlock an account.

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Maybe, alternatively, this is just an indicator that ad-based "free" services aren't really realistically economical and we should all be paying google 50c/mo for our email addresses.

Also, I think it's unreasonable to accept "support just sucks now" as a norm - consumer protections exist to shield us from BS like this and the US has been far too lax in flexing those muscles lately.

Gmail is the ultimate root of way too many services for me, but I don’t really see any alternative. For example there are lots of nice paid services out there that look great, but eventually I’m going to forget to pay, or the company will go under, or whatever.

IMO we need USPS email addresses for the same reason we have mailboxes. The ability to be contacted digitally is just table stakes nowadays.

> For example there are lots of nice paid services out there that look great, but eventually I’m going to forget to pay, or the company will go under, or whatever.

Right, that's why I think there should be an option for a $500 permanent email address, or maybe $50 one-time payment that doesn't guarantee permanent access but does guarantee that the email address will sit there as long as it takes for you to be able to pay to restore your account, without being deleted or reassigned.

Purchase a domain and use your registrar's SMTP and IMAP servers. I have been doing this for about 5 years now and it feels great. I get to pay annually for a bundle of related services (domain, DNS, email, ...) instead of freeloading in a place where I'm the product and there is no support.

You could also purchase a domain and point MX records anywhere, preferably at some known-good mail service which you pay for.

You don't need to use your registrar. I'm grandfathered in with free G Suite, but there's other services that can do this on the cheap or free.

How grandfathered? I had a customer recently whose small business was "grandfathered" into G Suite's free plan... until Google started choking back hard on what features were available.. The free plan still exists but they were essentially forced into buying a subscription.

Maybe the next million new jobs is just rebuilding a reasonable level of customer support at all tech companies, funded by modest usage fees

This already exists.

It's why if you have a certain bank balance, when you call the bank a human in your own country picks up and speaks to you in your native tongue immediately. And if you don't have a certain bank balance, you sit on hold for 90 minutes and are repeatedly told how important your call is.

That's called competition. Banks interoperating with each other means competitors serving different segments of the market can spring up.

Google does not interoperate and effectively has a monopoly on web search, web video (YouTube) and is one of the two evils owning the mobile market (the other being Apple). There is no way for a competitor to emerge because it just wouldn't be able to interoperate with any of these services.

Buying Google One entitles you to general Google apps support.

https://one.google.com/about/support

My comprehension of the actual costs of the infrastructure required to run those services leads me to believe that Google One is essentially insanely overpriced. Perhaps it's due to high service needed customers self-selecting for the service or it's just price gouging - but the pricing for that is well above what such limited cloud storage offerings normally cost.

I have Google One and tried their support once or twice but wasn't impressed. I strongly doubt their ability to help with any somewhat technical question.

Does this really grant access to tech support for weird access issues like the OP?

Because if so, it’s cheap insurance at $20/year.

> I would definitely pay for Gmail

You already can. It’s called Google Workspace and comes with support.

High fees mean that most people even in places like the USA cannot afford it. Would be nice to have modest customer service options for everyone.

That’s expensive.

Won't somebody just think of Googles pocketbook. The only way they can stay afloat is telling people to go fuck themselves when Google messes something about their entire online identity up, clearly.

Or people could pay for the Workspaces account which come with support.

Basing someone’s entire online identity on a free account has always been pretty sketchy. We just haven’t come up with a better plan for most people yet.

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