Terraria Port To Google Stadia Cancelled After Creator's Google Account Locked (arstechnica.com) 166
New submitter Pibroch(CiH) writes: Andrew Spinks, the creator of Terraria and lead developer for Re-Logic, has been trying to find out why his Google account (which encompasses YouTube, Gmail, and many other important services) was suddenly banned and locked with no warning.
According to Ars Technica: "Spinks says his entire Google account has been down for three weeks now, and Google has 'done nothing but given me the runaround.' You can view the quality of Google's support on Twitter for yourself. After the tweet from the official Terrarria account, YouTube support declined Re-logic's request to try to solve the problem privately, choosing instead to publicly offer irrelevant suggestions to the game developer with over 30 million customers. First, YouTube asked if Re-Logic could access its banned email account, which the developer already explained was banned. Then, YouTube suggested trying Google's account recovery system, which is only for users who have forgotten their Google password. Finally, YouTube shared instructions for how to recover a voluntarily deleted Google account, which is in no way relevant to an account ban."
Spinks has moved to cancel the release of the popular game Terraria on Google's Stadia game streaming platform.
According to Ars Technica: "Spinks says his entire Google account has been down for three weeks now, and Google has 'done nothing but given me the runaround.' You can view the quality of Google's support on Twitter for yourself. After the tweet from the official Terrarria account, YouTube support declined Re-logic's request to try to solve the problem privately, choosing instead to publicly offer irrelevant suggestions to the game developer with over 30 million customers. First, YouTube asked if Re-Logic could access its banned email account, which the developer already explained was banned. Then, YouTube suggested trying Google's account recovery system, which is only for users who have forgotten their Google password. Finally, YouTube shared instructions for how to recover a voluntarily deleted Google account, which is in no way relevant to an account ban."
Spinks has moved to cancel the release of the popular game Terraria on Google's Stadia game streaming platform.
Why stream this game? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Some people would rather pay a subscription fee and play a variety of different games, rather than pay $10 (in the case of Terraria) for a game that they might not like. Streaming also lets those people move their gaming between platforms and locations more easily. Streaming the game reaches that audience.
Stadia though? (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
It's been available for free for a while (Stadia).
Paying gets 4k and some free games (which this would likely be at some point).
Some games are even free to play without the subscription, because microtransactions are taking over everything.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Stadia though? (Score:5, Insightful)
But with Stadia, you're not renting games. You're paying full price per title to add it to your Stadia library. Then you're stuck paying the monthly fee on top of that or playing in low-resolution mode for free. Google can raise the monthly fee or eliminate the free tier whenever they want and you can either keep paying whatever they charge or lose the games you've paid full price for.
Then when Stadia is inevitably added to Google Graveyard, you lose all the games you paid for anyway.
Re: (Score:3)
Remember Blockbuster Video, when people used to rent games and movies for a few days? Some people preferred that over buying, since they rarely wanted to watch the same thing more than once or intended to try-before-they-buy the game.
It puts you in a very different mindset. My brother used to rent a lot of games from the £1 special bin and most of them he didn't play for very long. Because he hadn't paid full price he was much less willing to put effort into getting some value out of them, and s
Re: (Score:3)
Because it's convenient to browse games on my phone and then put them on my TV, or alternately just play them on any random computer such as a chromebook depending on my mood.
I enjoy the Stadia experience, though I doubt I would have ever purchased the controller or the special Chromecast (they sent them to me for free). I don't even subscribe to the $10/month, but I have a small handful of games I got when they were doing deep sales in December, and hopefully I can play them at least into mid 2022 (I'll fe
Re: (Score:2)
He is a lucky one (Score:5, Insightful)
His potentially a lucky user, since he is high profile enough that this sort of action might get him unlocked by actions of C level executives. Most other people in that situation are so out of luck, especially when a Google One customer is not allowed to use billing history as a recovery mechanism, during password recovery.
Re:He is a lucky one (Score:5, Insightful)
His potentially a lucky user, since he is high profile enough that this sort of action might get him unlocked by actions of C level executives.
If I was in his position, I'd leverage that to get some real accountability; if possible, I'd even go through threats of a lawsuit unless some demands are immediately met, like:
- full internal review of their process with how it relates to account cancellations, within 30 days, to be examined privately
- Full assessment on exactly how many people have been, and are currently in the same type of situation
- Full plan on how to address this problem that has plagued this multi-billion company for years, within 90 days.
Re: (Score:2)
It's probably an automated fuck up. Google loves to automate and hates having humans involved.
The system probably decided he was abusing his account in some way that results in instant termination with no recovery. Maybe it was hacked by someone, maybe he just did something he thought was fine.
Re: (Score:2)
Or the AI thought was going to commit a crime and pre-emptively disabled his account. Good luck figuring out why! You'll need a second AI for that...
Re: (Score:2)
It's probably an automated fuck up. Google loves to automate and hates having humans involved.
The system probably decided he was abusing his account in some way that results in instant termination with no recovery. Maybe it was hacked by someone, maybe he just did something he thought was fine.
So you're saying a multi-billion dollar company doesn't have the resources to properly inform users why their account got locked?
Re:He is a lucky one (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you think they got to be a multi-billion-dollar company? You don't get there by wasting your money caring about the details. You just have to keep snowballing on, hoping you get big enough without causing too much damage in the process.
Re: (Score:2)
So it can't be a 'fuck up' then, can it? It was intentional.
not by wiring checks buy him out boys (Score:2)
not by wiring checks buy him out boys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Agree!! (Score:2)
It's
Google
fuck up
I agree, those words definitively go together!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure you are right. Google goes to great lengths to avoid humans getting involved and it's basically impossible to contact one. Even relatively large channels with 1 million+ subscribers at YouTube can't.
It's by far the worst aspect of Google. There is just no way to communicate problems to them.
Re: (Score:2)
It's by far the worst aspect of Google. There is just no way to communicate problems to them.
I've given up on anything but twitter for communicating with companies any more. If you don't publicly shame them then they generally don't give two fucks about your problem.
Re: He is a lucky one (Score:2)
Re: He is a lucky one (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
If I got banned from my Gmail account the about 10% of my online activity that hasn't yet been migrated to my paid (about $30 per year) email account would be slightly missed.
Google has been something to avoid for years now.
Re: (Score:2)
You can only have justice if the law recognizes the wrong. In this case it's a free service and the ToS say Google can boot you off any time for any or no reason and there is nothing you can do about it.
So what you need are better consumer laws that recognize that people come to rely on these free services, and that makes such one sided contracts unlawful. For some reason though the US seems to have an aversion to consumer rights.
Re: (Score:2)
Millions is certainly an exaggeration, but it certainly happens. I work for an email company, so I hear about it very frequently. And yes, we will disable accounts too, but you'll always be able to talk to a real person about it, and get it fixed if it was in error.
And PayPal certainly still holds up money.
Re: (Score:2)
OTOH, if it's happening to thousands, we might not hear much about it.
Re:He is a lucky one (Score:5, Interesting)
I recommended GSuite to a colleague of mine for her small business of 7 users. The product is good, support for most things was also good. But when her account (which as the super admin) got taken over/locked out despite having 2fA enabled there was no way to reach support. No Phone number to call. Only instructions to log into your account to create a support PIN, which she couldn't do. The recovery process verified her mobile phone via SMS and the Google App, but this still wasn't enough to recover the account telling her to contact support which she couldn't do. I quickly logged into my GSuite/Workspace account and created a PIN to get a call from support and spoke to a gentlemen that was completely powerless to help. The only thing he could offer is that someone would call in 48 hours. What an absolute nightmare this was for my colleague. She lost $15k in sales and would have lost more if I didn't switch her MX records to another service and me losing a weekend setting all of this up.
Google is Asshole. Rely on them at your own peril.
Re: (Score:2)
Going against the common trend here to suggest recommending Office 365 in future. As a paying customer, you get a real person calling you back within hours whenever you log a support call. And with an action pack subscription you get 5 E3 licenses as well as $100 azure credits per month.
Re: (Score:2)
Between parent and grandparent posts, I bet you could sell your experiences to Microsoft and have them turn it into an advertisement.
Re: (Score:2)
People love to complain against companies like Dell and Microsoft, but as a business customer any lost time likely translates into huge sums of money lost so effectively you are paying for the quick support options so long as the product gets the job done who cares.
No, we are the lucky ones. (Score:3, Interesting)
Having been banned from Facebook because I called FB a binch of cunts for literally demanding from my girlfriend to commit an ILLEGAL action involving giving them extremely private information just to prove she is a real person ... Having been banned for that was the best things that happened to me online for years.
These "services" are a prison and a drug at the same time. With hundrets of psychology experts working every day, to make it impossible to leave.
Google is no different.
Be thankful you cannot go b
How to get your own site viewed? (Score:2)
Your own vserver costs $1-5, depending on your needs! E-Mail, video hosting, blog, whatever you want. Offer it to friends.
I too would like to recommend having your own website on your own domain name as a replacement for Google and other silos [indieweb.org]. When I have recommended this to my friends, however, they have each time pointed out that the IndieWeb community had not yet figured out a counterpart to the recommendation engines [indieweb.org] that the big silos have. Once I have my own website, how do I go about getting viewers for my blog posts and videos?
Re: (Score:2)
Big companies == no communication (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of these companies are too big to do anything correctly. Even if you're a paying customer, something bad happens, nobody is accountable, and nothing can be done.
While self hosting email and other services is outside of the wheelhouse of most people, tech companies really should be running their own services, unless those services don't really matter. If they don't matter, then who cares when Google locks your accounts without explanation?
Re:Big companies == no communication (Score:5, Interesting)
A game developer really shouldn't be hosting an email server. Why deal with all of that overhead/security for email?
The story here is really Google's abysmal customer service, in ALL regards. Google really is the worst of the big tech companies.
Many people hate on Microsoft because of their business practices from 20 years ago, but they are far and away the best customer service of big tech. I have actually *spoken* to people at Microsoft, and had good responses. I've had horrible experiences with Google, even after spending tens of thousands of dollars on their products.
The article is spot-on. Doing business with Google is a recipe for disaster. Sure, host your kids schoolwork on Google Drive, but anything beyond that is just putting yourself at risk. They are clowns with no respect to anyone else's business.
Re: (Score:3)
A game developer really shouldn't be hosting an email server. Why deal with all of that overhead/security for email?
The question in general is why should it be that self-hosting an email server should be so much more trouble than using a provider? Why is it that increasingly the only way to avail yourself of most of the industry is by also having the vendor run the software and still have you locked in?
There is the terrible user experience, sure, but there is also the fact that whether it is deliberate or incompetent accident, a single company managed to torpedo so much of his online experience. So we have 'everything as
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The question in general is why should it be that self-hosting an email server should be so much more trouble than using a provider? Why is it that increasingly the only way to avail yourself of most of the industry is by also having the vendor run the software and still have you locked in?
The internet is a shitty place. I don't want it to be, but it is. My main job isn't IT even though I larp at it sometimes. I pay to offload my problems to other service providers. You have to deal with spam, constant hack attempts, hardware failure, and the very real threat of a DDoS hanging over your head if you're self-hosting anything.
Re: (Score:2)
The point is that if 5% of what has been invested in developing off-premise mail systems were invested in on-premise software, it would be a lot easier to cope with.
My point is not that email *isn't* hard to deal with now, it's that it *shouldn't* be if the pace of investment in self-hosting solutions had kept up instead of everyone taking their ball and making it only available through off-premise.
Re:Big companies == no communication (Score:4, Informative)
Because email was badly designed and can't be fixed now.
Email is too easy to abuse. Too easy to spam, too easy to pretend to be someone else and run scams. It's a security disaster and most people don't seem to be able to set up a server that isn't abused within minutes of going online.
Nothing seems able to replace it either.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Bullshit. I run my own server, it's fine.
Re: (Score:2)
So tell us how you do it.
How did you get around the fact that most residential/consumer ISPs block port 25 and most of the big email providers don't accept mail from those IP address ranges, or the IP addresses of known VPN endpoints? Presumably you paid to host your service at a datacentre somewhere, or perhaps it's a business broadband connection.
Did you set up your own domain and get certificates for it? If you don't do that your mail will probably be rejected by all the big email services.
What software
Re: (Score:2)
So there are answers to that, but my point is that, by and large, not that the *current* reality is trivial, it is that it is only such a mess because as a big market we chose not to invest in something empowering like easy self-hosting and instead put all our collective effort in rent-seeking providing strategies instead, placing a great deal of influence on very few companies.
Re: (Score:2)
There are plenty of non-easy self hosting options though, but most of them are useless for email for the reasons I outlined above.
It's not a question of just putting more effort in, there are simply no technical solutions to this problem that support random low cost self-hosting. The web isn't all that different, phishing pages are still a big problem that has not been adequately resolved. The whole certificate-as-identity-verification system collapsed.
Re: (Score:2)
I feel like the 'certificate-as-identity system collapsed' is overstating it.
People are given a vetted indication of the identity they are talking to. Unicode confusion exacerbated the problem but has largely been squashed. We still have a fundamental problem that people fail to bother to examine the identity presented (much like 'there is a problem with your credit card account' catches some people despite the fact that the caller doesn't even know which bank to impersonate). However off-premise email does
Re: (Score:2)
There are so many that changing your password is as likely to change it TO something that will be guessed as it is to change it from something that will be guessed.
It's not like the old da
Re: (Score:2)
SSH doesn't really solve the main problem though - identity verification. How do you know that a message is genuine, not phishing or spam?
Re: (Score:2)
Except if we wanted to, we could have fixed it by now. That is my complaint, that it is only hard because the economic incentive is to not make it easy to self-host.
Look at the web. When the web started, you had plain text on the wire, trivially manipulated, and ability for webpages to move data from another without the users knowledge. No one said 'oh well, nothing we can do, it's set now'.
Email has had a lot of tweaks, but the problem of individual identity has been punted less due to technical limitation
Re: (Score:2)
"The question in general is why should it be that self-hosting an email server should be so much more trouble than using a provider?"
Do you run a farm and milk your own cows, and mill your own wheat. Because you absolutely can do it too, its just requires a lot of time. Most of us, by far, use a provider.
It's a big job, requiring specialized knowledge, and if you don't do it at scale, it is a colossal amount of work for very little return.
And if you DO do it at scale, then you are a 'provider'.
Re: (Score:2)
Why? I run my own email server, and for the handful of accounts it has it's rather trivial to run. Took a week or so to set up, another week over it's lifetime to make final adjustments to, but it pretty much runs itself other than applying security updates to the packages. Plus it's better at handling spam than any commercial offering since it doesn't have to compromise with advertisers.
I'd agree with you if I were trying to run an email server for an actual user base of any real size, but part of the poin
Re:Big companies == no communication (Score:4, Interesting)
"Took a week or so to set up, another week over it's lifetime to make final adjustments to, but it pretty much runs itself other than applying security updates to the packages."
Even that is a pretty serious investment when you add it up. Hundreds if not low thousands of dollars over the lifetime if you put any value on your time. You don't mention backups, testing backups, migrating to new hardware, or anything else that happens. (And its fine if its a labor of love ... I think its pretty reasonable for a hobbyist to put together; and worthwhile to have the experience... I just think its tempting fate if you are seriously rely on it at all.
In my own experience, a motherboard failed while i was out of the country on a trip. Having my email down for days was beyond the pale. The handful of people who also relied on it were seriously inconvenienced and pissed.
Re: (Score:2)
My point was that it has been left as a mess without improvements to self-hosting mostly because all investment that would have been done to improve it as a self-host friendly facility has instead been directed to off-premise strategies. Companies are building walled gardens of communication because they have the power and that lock-in is valuable.
Re: Big companies == no communication (Score:2)
WTF? What degenerated timed are you living in?
15 years ago, EVERYONE had his *own* website. With E-Mail obviously.
There is nothing special about it. Except the bullshit Google added. My spam filter is much better than Google's. (Which constantly puts things in Spam that obviously isn't, like Bugzilla mails I subscribed to. Or lets shit through because other idiots in its user base like thar crap. Like Facebook mailing me to come back, even after *they* banned me years ago [I'm proud to say.].)
(I use greylis
"Google is the worst.." Let talk PayPal (Score:2)
Dunno. Have you ever had to try to work with PayPal? I've talked with Google people. Never once after years of trying have I ever even thought I might get a PayPal person on a phone call. Just an PayPal == email bitbucket.
Re: (Score:2)
Many people hate on Microsoft because of their business practices from 20 years ago, but they are far and away the best customer service of big tech.
This is the most ignorant and tone deaf thing I have ever heard on slashdot, ...
You're talking about product, GP was talking about customer service. Yes, you can talk to a living customer service rep from Microsoft - I have several times in the past few weeks, getting to the bottom of how and why something happened after we resolved an issue.
The summary makes it seem that you can't talk to an actual support person in Google.
Re: (Score:2)
Many people hate on Microsoft because of their business practices from 20 years ago, but they are far and away the best customer service of big tech.
This is the most ignorant and tone deaf thing I have ever heard on slashdot, ...
You're talking about product, GP was talking about customer service. Yes, you can talk to a living customer service rep from Microsoft - I have several times in the past few weeks, getting to the bottom of how and why something happened after we resolved an issue.
The summary makes it seem that you can't talk to an actual support person in Google.
Forced updates and disabling cracked games is bad customer service idiot, aka windows update will try to disable your UWP games if you try to crack or modify the exe's. There are plenty of good reasons to crack games to preserve them and mod them for future generations. Microsoft wants us to move to a world of designed obsolescence.
Re: (Score:2)
Fixed that for you. Try reading the post you are responding to and at least semi-tailoring your MS rants to the topic at hand if you don't just want people to roll their eyes and ignore your message. We're talking about Customer Service quality. The OP is entirely right that Microsoft offer good customer service relative to other big tech firms; I'd love to see the others improve but if anything it feels like they continue to get worse.
Re: (Score:3)
Fixed that for you. Try reading the post you are responding to and at least semi-tailoring your MS rants to the topic at hand if you don't just want people to roll their eyes and ignore your message. We're talking about Customer Service quality. The OP is entirely right that Microsoft offer good customer service relative to other big tech firms; I'd love to see the others improve but if anything it feels like they continue to get worse.
In case you hadn't noticed "windows 10" is a service, and forced updates is bad customer service.
Re: (Score:2)
Google is better at running a mail sever than they are. Of course using an @gmail.com address is foolish, having google host the email for your domain seems fine (backups elsewhere as usual). People do get stuck with an email address they started using when they were young and foolish often enough - and the longer you put off changing it the harder it is.
Re: (Score:2)
My dad still runs his business from an @aol.com
Another Google nightmare story (Score:5, Interesting)
From one of his tweets: [twitter.com]
This is absolute bullshit on Google's part, and while I haven't heard of him before or his game(s), I'm glad to see he's taken a stance that's getting notice re: Google's dismissive behaviour towards its own customers.
Re:Another Google nightmare story (Score:5, Insightful)
users aren't googles customers, advertisers are its customers, data brokers are its customers, we're essentially live stock to google
Re: (Score:2)
users aren't googles customers, advertisers are its customers, data brokers are its customers, we're essentially live stock to google
As Grandparent said, there are users which pay money to google to use GMail, Google Office and all the other stuff.
One of the perks of paying, is not having your mail searched, or your activity shared with advertisers.
Therefore, those are Goggle's customers. And not even those people are excepted form situations like this.
Re: Another Google nightmare story (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Except that they really aren't customers. They are product that are subsidizing part of the cost. The entire Google culture is about monetizing users.
Nope. [slashdot.org]
Re: Another Google nightmare story (Score:2)
Re: Another Google nightmare story (Score:2)
Lol. And you really believed them when they said that paying gets you out and you shelled over the protection money?
I need some of what you are smoking!
Re: (Score:3)
To be fair, even advertisers and people who spend big money with Google complain about their poor service.
I've heard from many people who have their own reps at Google... and they still can't get real service for this stuff.
Google assumes that all customer service can be automated, but there's always going to be along tail of one-off stuff and they try to get by with ignoring it, only for stories like this to bite them in the ass periodically.
Re: (Score:2)
"not having your mail searched, or your activity shared with advertisers."
God, how naive are you?
How do you trust a company that has never done anything to validate that trust, and plenty that warrants further distrust in anything they do?
Censorship of entire accounts for YouTube comments ("wrongthink expressed on YouTube, let's ban their entire account including all email comms, losing their phonebook and locking them out of their phone"), manipulation of reviews, scores, likes purely for political reasons
Re: (Score:2)
users aren't googles customers, advertisers are its customers, data brokers are its customers, we're essentially live stock to google
My company’s AdSense account got locked out for unknown reasons - several weeks on there was still no additional info or resolution. We ended up giving up and creating a new one.
Definitely doesn’t happen just to “free” users.
Re: Another Google nightmare story (Score:2)
It is fully automated. There is no human on the other end. You get locked out because the "AI" sees a "field of sheep" (Stsrtpage.com it.).
Err... (Score:2)
Startpage.com!
Or DuckDuckGo.
Or whatever.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The first step of a solution is identifying a problem. "Just complaining" supposedly accomplishes nothing, but I hope he bangs that pot loud, even if he has no intention of going back.
Which, he'll probably cave and do just that (stadia aside) making all this theatrical, but of value all the same.
Peasants will still be on a different level of resource, but maybe it will be better than Zero.
I feel like my satire at arstech is worth a paste,
Oh, right. That was me. I'm a competitor in Andrew's field and figured lobbing a complaint over the wall would slow him down. It was so easy I forgot I did it. I must have also forgotten bribes I sent to Google since that's all it took to have him canceled, nay, banished to the shadow realm.
Hell, I must have done it drunk, since I reported his YOUTUBE account and accomplished a nuclear glassing anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
*recourse, idiot
Re: (Score:2)
Without trying to defend Google's lack of response, it is possible that the account did breach Google's TOS. Either the account or one of Andrew Spinks' devices might have been hacked, and used to send, for instance, spam.
Re: (Score:3)
Without trying to defend Google's lack of response, it is possible that the account did breach Google's TOS. Either the account or one of Andrew Spinks' devices might have been hacked, and used to send, for instance, spam.
That's no excuse of not letting know exactly why it was locked out, or giving him the runaround.
You can't even bribe them (Score:5, Insightful)
Many are afraid of using Google's services for just such a reason: random lockage or new show-stopping defects without any practical recourse. As far as I know, you can't even pay for responsive service.
Re: You can't even bribe them (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Google and Oracle managed to make Microsoft look good in comparison. That's no small feat.
Re:You can't even bribe them (Score:4, Informative)
I have an Android phone, but it's never had a Google account on it. I get my apps from F-Droid (plus a few with Aurora Store), use the basic email client with non-gmail accounts, use a local calendar, etc.
You don't have to use Google's services.
Re: (Score:2)
True, with Lineage you can at least get by without Google/Apple services now. It's an inferior experience though, e.g. your camera won't work as well as it does with the official app from the manufacturer in most cases. I suppose you could pirate those essential apps.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, pirated software will help with keeping people from tracking you.
Re: (Score:2)
50 bucks!? Maybe in the US... I pay £5/month for phone service and selling location data is illegal here.
Re: (Score:2)
I pay £5/month
My god, I don't even wanna know what that actually is!
Re: (Score:2)
Strange, in the op I saw A with a hat on it. Yet that disappeared when I posted a copy of it, but only after posting. Why didn't it disappear in the OP post?
Re: (Score:2)
It's fine. 500 minutes, unlimited texts and 1GB data which can roll over for a maximum of 2GB.
It was some special offer, normal price is £6/month!
Incognito mode (Score:2)
What was that url? (Score:2)
http://takeout.google.com/ [google.com] perhaps?
Switch to FastMail (Score:2)
Oh, and I'm not being spied on by a Big Tech panopticon.
They only thing crazier (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: They only thing crazier (Score:3)
Unless you are a Chinese board game player. :)
(Oh, and on that note: When somebody says "Tesla", he *always* means Nikola. Nikola Tesla! And IP means Internet Protocol. And PC means Personal Computer. And a hacker is somebody hacking away at his keyboard. Or may a flying chainsaw blade be your sideways meal!)
Google isn't human. It is Skynet. (Score:2)
It's a hostile sentient AI.
Prove me wrong by trying to get hold of an actual human through customer support. I dare you. I double-dare you! ... ;)
Like any lifeform, it feeds on something (information), grows into a space (computers), and shapes its environment (you) to its liking.
You only have to find out how it bleeds. ;)
Because if it can bleed, you can kill it.
If not... nuke it from orbit.
Re: (Score:2)
I dare you. I double-dare you! ... ;)
I see you're familiar with the ritual [youtube.com].
This is complete sarcasm (Score:2)
This all seems to stem from YouTube (Score:2)
Indirect cost/risk of all cloud services (Score:3)
Once you hand over your business or life to the cloud, you become very dependent on that cloud service. The service could disappear, raise prices, arbitrarily ban or limit you and your only recourse is to stop paying them, so the free services leave you no recourse at all. There are other side effects, such as data leakage either via compromises in security, via misconfiguration or simply feature or default setting redefinition. Not to mention that you lose your corporate firewall protection (internally hosted servers are only accessible to someone on the inside, cloud based ones are accessible to everyone on the internet) which means much larger pool of potential hackers with access at least to the server authentication.
Self hosting (including datacenter rental) costs more, until the cloud screws you over and you pay it back in interest.
Same for Facebook (Score:3)
Lesson: don't use Google for anything permanent. Don't use their products. Don't use their services. Don't use their tools. Don't even use their f'ing search engine.
And don't forget, this risk is exactly the same for Facebook. If you use that to log in to things, be prepared to lose those things if Facebook decides to cancel you for any reason.