Comment by x0x0
5 years ago
I actually don't think this is that hard to fix though.
I'm a fan of google doing their best to protect people from scammers. The real issue here is no way to submit an escalated help request when they accidentally mess up. eg they could build a service where -- and I doubt scammers would play -- $100 (or even $1k) would escalate a help request with a 15 minute SLA. I run a business; we would have no problem paying an escalation fee.
I can already see the headlines on HN:
"How Google Runs a Pay-to-Play Protection Racket"
I mean, that's their whole business anyway, so...
Format your site to suit google, or they don't index it.
Add headers to your emails or google reduces deliverability.
Pay for clicks on your own company's name or google sells ads against the name of your company! They monetize navigation queries.
Run your site through amp and let google steal your traffic or google pushes your search rank down the page.
Let google steal answers to questions contained on your site and display them as answers w/o sending people to your site, or they deindex you (see tons of examples, but also genius).
Let google steal your carefully curated and expensive photographs for google shopping and use them for the item from other vendors or you can't list items in google shopping.
etc etc etc... it's nothing new. So we may as well encourage them to do a more helpful job of what they were going to do anyway.
This was the old Microsoft support model: opening a case cost $99(IIRC), but if the case was actually a MS bug/issue they’d waive the fee.
It might have started at $99 but it's much higher now. I think the last time I used it it was $299 but that was at least 2 decades ago. Fortunately it was their bug.