| ▲ | adithyassekhar 4 hours ago |
| Edit: I have misread some of the comments here, he didn't lose access to his whole account and data just the antigravity part. I should've done my due diligence, get out of bed and spent more time thinking instead of emotionally reacting. Guess the rage machine got me as well. Damn. I think this thread might be hijacked by ai bros. The main point still stands, google is part of a duopoly that runs the world. You can't be a functional member of society without them. They're like a public utility and plays too big of a role in people's life to take decisions based on unknown internal policies. They're long overdue for a government intervention or for splitting up. |
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| ▲ | avaer 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| This is why companies get broken up. Usually they'll try to hide the monopoly/tying to avoid this. What's interesting is that they don't seem to be trying. It's not the same thing but it does remind me of [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor.... |
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| ▲ | echelon 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Google needs to be dismantled. A lot of us on HN have been calling for this for years now. Can we start saying it in unison to legislators and the press? Please? If you're in the EU, do your part too. This company taxes the URL bar. It owns 92% of them and turns trademarks they don't own into forced bidding wars. There's no way to access any brand without paying Google extortion fees. This company removed AdBlock. This company controls 50% of mobile - the most important device category and devices we own and pay for - and now they're removing our ability to use them as we please. More taxation, more Google services, every app and search through the Google troll toll. You can't even order from a restaurant anymore without one of these things and Google lords over it. They own your digital life. They own infrastructure. They own discovery. They own every touch point. They are too big. Anthropic and OpenAI are having to pay out the nose for 60% of users to even access them, meanwhile Google sings "lalalala" and forced their AI products onto users at no cost. Break them up now. Do it horizontally, not vertically: instead of splitting off Chrome and Search and YouTube, create Google A, Google B, Google C ... Make them split all the same pieces and make them all compete with each other. That is fair for the consumer. That is fair for competition. That is the most capitalistic friendly thing to do. Because right now Google is an invasive species in every market destroying the entire competitive ecology. |
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| ▲ | wanderingmind 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Best way to deal with this is take them to small claims court. If enough people do this, They have to send representations that will cost them enough to stop such nonsense. |
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| ▲ | ninjagoo 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | They have binding arbitration clauses in their Terms of "Service". I don't know if you can actually take them to small claims court. They got rid of their "Don't be evil" motto for a reason, after all. |
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| ▲ | deaux 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's absurd and shameful. If only for the fact of banning individual consumers paying $249/month without warning, completely rendering them unable to use the service they paid for, including through the official app. Just the 1000th instance of disgusting behavior by US big tech. |
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| ▲ | NewsaHackO 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Oh now this is the new pivot? >Can you begin to imagine losing access to all your emails, accounts, every photo you ever took? Because what they didn't like how you used one unrelated product tied to your account? What are you talking about? He didn't lose access to Google, in fact, he is using his Google account to make the post. He lost access to the service they are claiming that he is misusing. |
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| ▲ | adithyassekhar 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I based my comment from one other comment posted here. Should've done some basic thinking. Clarified in my original comment. | |
| ▲ | xg15 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This has been happening in other situations though. | | |
| ▲ | adithyassekhar 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes especially if you have a developer account. Sometimes an app rejection did result losing not just the entire google account but also the developer's private google account. |
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| ▲ | HardCodedBias 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | If this had happened it would be scandalous. Unreal, really. Luckily, it sounds like reality was his Gemini account was banned. Much more reasonable. |
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| ▲ | 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | hsuduebc2 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| This is a serious problem. I think the only durable solution is legislation that requires these companies to provide access to your data, or at least a way to export or transfer it, even after an account ban. Otherwise, if they delete your account for any reason, even for a legitimate policy violation, they can effectively cut you off from information you have built up and stored over years. In Apple’s case, an account lock can even leave a device unusable. I have read several blog posts from people describing how frustrating it is to have an account locked. Because Google, like many large companies, provides little to no effective support, the only thing that seemed to work was getting a post to trend on Hacker News so that someone inside Google noticed and intervened to resolve it. |
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| ▲ | akssassin907 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Fine, restrict the OpenClaw usage. Fine, cancel the AI Pro subscription. But nuking Gmail, Google Photos, Drive — years of irreplaceable personal data — as punishment for how you routed tokens? That's not enforcement, that's collective punishment. No bank closes your checking account because you used your debit card at a competitor's ATM. The offense and the penalty are in completely different weight classes. That's what makes this indefensible regardless of whether the policy itself is legitimate. | | |
| ▲ | tgsovlerkhgsel 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Source that that is what is happening? Because everything I've seen looks like that the use of that one service is blocked, not the whole account. | | |
| ▲ | akssassin907 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Fair point, I was going off the "quoted suspension email" in the OP. If it's only the AI service and not the full account, that is definitely not as bad. Either way the zero-warning policy though is a big issue IMP. |
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| ▲ | tempaccount420 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Looks like someone gave their OpenClaw a link to this thread. | | |
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| ▲ | gck1 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Google does give you a way to export data partially if your account is banned. But that's still not enough. I can't easily reconstruct this data in a way that will be usable to me, not without having something like Gemini build a UI for me. Oh wait. |
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