UPDATE : Since writing this and contacting some Googlers, my Google account was unblocked at 2 am last night, EST. Thank you Google for the prompt response, although those were some very stressful 15 hours or so.
Google, I am a very lucky American who is living the dream of owning or being a partner in several small businesses. Each of these businesses utilize Google’s GMail and Google Docs, in an effort to cut down on infrastructure costs and keep an open stream of communication between all employees, contractors and clients.
Since Google has decided to take my account away from me, the nucleus of our company communications has been taken away and now is replaced by a black hole. My small business communications are now ruined until my account is reestablished.
Furthermore, my clients all contact me via email addresses associated with my Google Account. Now, when these clients attempt to contact me, or send over time sensitive documents or reports, these emails are now send to a voided account, and now, since Google has decided to block my Google Account, GMail is now serving this negative message to my clients and business associates :
“Technical details of permanent failure: Account disabled”
Thank you Google, you have shone a most negative light on my business with my clients.
Mobile Google Accounts and Blackberry Synching
Google, you have given me along with many small businesses the means to easily streamline my communications with GMail and Google Accounts, but now you have taken this away with no warning, giving me no time to prepare by downloading my address book or other contact information.
Upon purchasing my Blackberry, I was enthralled to set up my Google Accounts application, which synchs my mobile device with Google Calendar & GMail, alerting me of meetings, calls and opening up my GMail address book to my Blackberry.
The Opening and Closing of Google
Such Google openness led to the ability to manage my business communications on the fly, after or before meetings, on the runway waiting for a plane to take off, or even in the car during heavy traffic. I have been a loyal user and evangelist of Google Accounts and GMail up until this point, now you have taken this away from me and my businesses.
Your Google Docs are marketed with the ability for businesses or individuals to easily collaborate on work and assignments, to work together and share information.
My business bought this philosophy, we were sold on it, but now not only has collaboration been taken away by Google disabling my Google Accounts, but the documents which I did not back up, because of the trust which was established with Google after all of these years.
Furthermore Google, I had fallen for GTalk, the trimmed down and super fast messaging service which almost everyone I know in the business world and in the personal world uses. I use GTalk everyday, for 8 to 12 hours a day, it’s always on, it’s always running. Google has become part of my life. Please give me a lifeline Google, instead of swiping this secure rug from underneath me, my company, my AdSense earnings and Google Analytics.
Now the joke is on me Google. After being an advocate for cloud computing, networked email and open communications, Google has taken this all away from me. My mistake; trusting Google and not backing up everything I had stored in my Gmail account.
GMail Changed The Game
GMail changed the way we read and store email. After years of being loyal to Yahoo Mail or my PC based mail, I made the switch over to GMail. GMail is the most painless way to store and sift through archived files and emails. Now all of my business emails which were stored on Google are gone. But not only my business emails, but the personal mails I have sent over the years including some of the last written correspondences with lost loved ones and dear friends, now gone, and I do not know if temporary or permanently, because Google has not given me this information.
Google, instead of just blocking my Google Account, please give me a reason. Please tell me why. Or give me a warning.
I am now an innocent victim of Google. My business communications just took a massive blow. Luckily, I do backup my documents offline .. but not every conversation, every conversation I have opened up to Google and trusted them to serve relevant advertising to which keeps my GMail free. Instead, what was once free is now taken from me. As are those writings, those memories, those all important directions, reports, invoices and business communications.
Google, dear Google, Why Have You Taken Away my Google & GMail Accounts?
Just another example as to why no business should be using any of Google’s free services.
Did you write directly to them about this? This is very scary, I have my whole life on google…
you’re the third person I heard of today who’s had their account disabled.
I was just a matter of time till something like this happened. But you kind of deserve it. Paid and reliable email hosting really isn’t that expensive, Even a dedicated server isn’t so expensive anymore Running business from a gmail account…what a joke. You could at least use your own domain and switch your MX immediately after they locked your account so you could still use email even if you could not use gmail.
My God Loren, what the heck happened? I have been using Google for quite a few years now and I can only imagine what the affects would be for me if my account was disabled by Google.
I really feel terrible about this situation for you and I wish you well with trying to get your accounts recovered. With that said, I also too appreciate that you have shared this experience with us, because it give all of us who reads this a wake up call.
Reading about this experience is a little nerve racking. Your story about how you used to use Yahoo and eventually made the switch to Google sounds just like me as well as the other million or so people who now use Google.
Why in the hell would anyone use a 3rd party email address for business in the first place, Google or otherwise?
3rd party email is fine for blog posts and such to avoid spam, but for business?
You learned a hard lesson here, maybe others will learn from your mistake and get a domain name and email they control for their business.
Loren, I have to wonder when an oldtimer uses third party apps for everything. I would have expected you to know better than that.
@Loren
This is terrible, you should at least get a reason from Google and way of getting your material out of the system. To lock you out completely is crazy.
If Google wants businesses to adopt cloud computing and their online services then this is a key issue to address. One of the primal fears of relying on this kind of setup is that you loose control. Stories like this are hardly going to calm those fears.
My best suggestion, when you do get this returned, is to move to Google Apps. Hopefully that gives you greater protection. The preferable option would be to pay them for the premium services, you would hope then that customer services would be available to you.
Good luck!
@WilliamC It’s not that I use Google for everything, but I do use it for a lot. And from time to time, business contacts will use my Gmail account to mail to, especially press and long term contacts. I know it’s not 100% safe, but GMail is better than most.
Furthermore, it’s not just email. This is also my Google Analytics login and AdSense login. By moving everything into one Google account, it made things easier to manage. And by doing so, easier for Google to disable everything they offer to me.
The problem with a cloud computing setup is that you have to rely in third party apps that are out of your control.
The lesson here shouldn’t probably be that it’s not a smart move if you are relying on free apps. There is little consideration towards free account holders – support is terrible to non-existant across a range of well known Web 2.0. apps.
They see the money coming from the investors rather than the users. Without monetory payment they are not even “customers”.
I’ve not had to use Google’s support for Apps yet but I would hope it is there. Paying money to them should enter you into a form of contract that offers a greater level of protection.
This does all suck though Loren. esp. in regard to your Adsense and Analytics accounts too.
Now will people start realizing that Google doesn’t “Do No Evil”?
A similar thing happened to a lot of blogs this summer. After a lot of back and forth, google finally realized that it was a glitch and fixed it. Still, it’s an inconvenience. Hope it turns out that it is just a glitch for you as well.
Well, I don’t like google, personally, I think they’re massive hypocrites, and I think their cool beta apps have an irritating inconsistency.
Yet, I took a good look at my own use of dedicated servers, third party apps, broadband access, etc etc and I realized that the proper response to your post is — I’m sorry, that sucks. I’ve been there and hope never to go back.
Very, very scary. I’m sorry to hear this happened to you Loren and I wish you the best of luck getting it resolved.
I have a friend that this happened to as well, please let me know if you get this resolved.
Ouch. That’s a few steps past being a PITA. Hope they’re able to sort it out for you.
Well I have to say that this story is totally getting a lot of attention now and with it happening to someone in this little sector of the blogosphere, it is bound to capture some attention at Google headquarters. Anyone who comments should start backing up their email and Google docs. LOL!!!
The “Google is Evil” spaz attack thing is sort of a corollary to Godwin’s Law. Say that and you lose. Google is a huge organization with a huge number of services. When something goes wrong it’s for the exact same reason that things go wrong where YOU work: stuff happens.
I have a feeling there’s something you’re not telling us.
I hope this gets resolved very soon.
This sounds like a nightmare to me..
i will land in a similar soup as i use most google apps for my site .. time to start getting to back to hosted email ?
Not to sound like a jerk, but you used a free beta service to meet a critical need for your business and are surprised when it stops working? I wouldn’t go so far as to say you deserve it, but you definitely should have planned better. You need to take responsibility for your own failure.
My Google account was disabled yesterday, too. Despite following every instruction I could find, when I try to sign in to my Gmail, calendar, and blogger account, I’m getting the message “Sorry, your account has been disabled.”
I have always adhered to Google’s Term of Agreements. When my account was mysteriously disabled, I followed the instructions to sign in and enter the CAPTCHA — but no CAPTCHA letters appear on the screen for me to enter so that I can confirm that I’m not a spammer. As also suggested, I cleared my browser’s cache, cookies, history, etc. I’ve run all anti-virus and spyware programs. I’ve talked to my Internet provider and they say they don’t think my computer has been infected with a virus/spyware or that my account was hacked by a spammer, either.
So why was my account disabled? And why, despite following all available instructions, is it still disabled? They won’t say.
Because I trusted Google, I kept all of my critical and important information on Google’s tools and applications. I need to access MY information!
Upgrade ur account so you can call their helpline.
Hope this gets resolved really soon. I use Google for everything and my position will be very similar to yours :-|
I can understand you pain. I am sure someone from Google will read this soon and get in touch with you. Lets hope you get your account back soon.
Come to think of it, why don’t you contact Matt Cutts if you haven’t done that already? I’ve noticed that contacting him results in getting solutions much faster!
why was the account disabled?
I worked for a very large hosting/email service provider and always got complaints like..”you locked me out of my account” “you disabled my account”….what they hardly ever mentioned was the many reasons and warnings that we gave before we had to resort to these measures.
Also I agree with many of the other posters…to even be using gmail for business reasons is so bad…get a domain, pay for email service…I cant imagine taking any serious doing business with a gmail account.
Google has always had an operational philosophy where “production testing” was considered acceptable.
Knowing as much about Google as you do, I am surprised that you entrusted them with any of your business-critical data or processes.
This sounds like a nightmare to me.. I ALL my service with google, that can´t be happening.
mm3guy wrote on Oct 19, 2008 at 11:27 p.m.
I have a feeling there’s something you’re not telling us.
Me too. Your website is http://www.searchenginejournal, so it sounds like you’d be very dependent on Google and yet you trash them publicly. Over an email address. Without even knowing why the account was suspended. Why aren’t you using serchenginejournal for email?
That tells that someone else is paying for all this.
Possibly someone who wants to discredit Google. Who could that be?
Simple solution. Get a URL on any webhosting company. Every hosting account comes with a standard POP mailbox. You can use Gmail to check this external mailbox. Gmail does an excellent job of integrating multiple individual popmail accounts into one webmail service.
The added advantage, is you’ll look *more* professional because you won’t have a “Gmail” address. And if Gmail ever cuts you off, no problem, just check your individual Pop mail accounts, or open another Gmail account and integrate them there. Your “public” addresses will be associated with your individual .com addresses and will never be at risk.
Loren sadly but welcome to the machine!
Now you and many other readers of this blog my come to understand why I have been bitching at Google for years. I have made enemies with Matt Cutts and Adam Lasnik to the point that I was labeled a Troll.
I welcomed this nic and wear it as Red Badge of Courage!
Google is dangerous and cannot be trusted!
People who work for Google are not our friends and cannot be trusted!
Let’s stand up for each other no matter who say what. We make the Internet, not Google nor any other Social Media network!
Sorry for your lose Loren, but there are loses out there even greater than this. I am sure you understand!
Your friend Igor
It happened to me too, and just last week. After going through Google’s procedure to report it, they reinstated the account. But never explained to me why it was disabled in the first place.
YGWYPF
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/details.html
Hi Loren, did you initiate the account recovery process at http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/request.py?ara=1 ? We recently blogged about this at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-to-do-if-you-cant-access-your.html — one of the problems could be (and I have no insight into your case, but it’s fairly common) that we recognized someone trying to hack into your account or trying to use your account for unusual things. From what I understand and what I’ve seen (my sister used it recently because she locked herself out), the process is pretty straight-forward and simple, especially if you still have your verification number.
Loren,
I ran into this problem a year ago, and only managed to retrieve my accounts after a fellow Canadian working for Google came to my rescue after reading about it on my blog. It does make you realize how much data you have with Google, and the pain involved in losing access.
Mark
@JohnMu Thanks for the suggestion. After this post was made I ended up emailing some Googlers and the situation ended up taking care of itself. Now, my Google Account is open again.
It’s been a scary 15 hours or so, as closing me out of my account closed me out of Google Analytics, AdSense, Docs, Talk … etc., not only GMail.
So, this is not just a “I can’t get into my GMail” issue, it’s the issue of using Google as a central location to access Analytics for mine and my client sites, to access Google Webmaster Tools, to access my personalized search results and bookmarks … so on and so on.
I’d like to thank all of those who commented on the story, and for those who suggested that I deserved to be locked out of Google because I have a blog about search, that really makes little sense to me.
I’ve learned some lessons from this experience, which I will be open to share. One is to not rely on one central cloud for my computing needs and always have an exit strategy, the other is to upgrade to Google Apps :)
@Loren I’m glad to hear that it got resolved, I’m not glad to hear that you ended up getting direct help instead of being able to get it resolved automatically :-(.
What steps could we take to make finding that blog post or the recovery process easier and faster?
JohnMu, not sure how to make that blog post more prominent, but it would be nice if the auto-fix process included an auto-generated email to the user giving a reason why the account was disabled in the first place. To just disable it, and then re-enable it, without giving any clue to the user as to what happened is just … well … what’s a good word? Crazy? Rude? Bad business? Whatever… the user should be given a reason. Period.
@JohnMu, It would be a simple matter of Google adding a link to the auto-fix process in the “disabled account” error message.
Loren, I’m glad that your account is back! Make sure you upgrade to Google Apps…At least that way you can get some support if anything goes wrong again
Domain Registration: $10 – Monthly hosting: $20 – Daily backups: 10 minutes… learning a lesson on being too cheap: PRICELESS!
You are nuts. “Upgrade” to another google product? To a company that has seen gmail go down for days at a time (many times)? Upgrade by using Yahoo or Hotmail. After all do you realy want a bunch of 20 yr old kids leaning over from their onsite caviar and massages and flipping a server switch?
You are running your business from a personal @gmail.com account? Is this amateur hour? At the very least, use Google Hosted and the business aspects of Gmail — you’d probably even find a quicker/better response to service inquires as well.
And what, you don’t share your data with anyone else in your organization? So all data was in your hands only? What happens when the proverbial bus hits you (like your personal gmail account going down)?
Even if you use a paid service, everyone that uses a service for business knows to keep their our back-ups of data. I know a lot of people that use Google Docs spreadsheets for keeping track of business financial data (for online/collaboration/sharing) but they all back-up the data locally, religiously.
Don’t blame Google for your own irresponsibility.
Wow. Just saw this. It’s very troubling that accounts can be shut off without a reason given.
A post above asked why you would use gmail for business, and I tend to agree with that. The fact is though that google has promoted all the apps FOR Business and claims “use them” please, etc. It’s one thing to give free stuff with little expectations, but quite another to give free stuff and promote all apps for business professionals as well. I’m disappointed. Bad Google.
That being said; I’ve used gmail for a few years as well, but only as a back up. I use my domain for email directly off my server, but also cc my gmail account… and have others do so as well as simply an extra backup for the times I may not have access to my domain email account. That being said; this is troubling for sure. I guess the one good thing about this Loren is the fact it happened on a weekend. :-) I don’t think you will be using a free email account for business again…at least not your main account.
This blows. Like you, I”ve migrated to more and more of Google stuff. These guys can freakin’ own us more than MSFT ever did.
Forwarding to my friend at GOOG
Loren, I can imagine your worry. I actually believe that Google Apps is a good entry for entrepreneurs and small businesses just getting started. I too use a combo of Gmail and Google Apps.
Here’s some tips from Lifehacker to backup Gmail/Apps Data: http://lifehacker.com/software/hack-attack/back-up-your-google-apps-data-281635.php
Same thing happened to me, as I lost a Gmail account too.
I have new one and now have everything is forwarded multiple times, so email is never lost.
Now they need to allow forwarding of Google Docs to other providers like Zoho; Google docs needs a redundancy option; forwarding may be just that!
Just a suggestion: If you have recovered access to your accounts, the post should be updated to reflect the change in status.
u shouls consider my gmail,
Hi Loren,
I am very happy that you finally got your account back, so can you please share with us what exactly caused the account to blocked ? was it a hacking attempt at your account ?
Hi Loren!
Please, make this post more worthwhile and right about what happened and why and how you got your account(s) back.
Any lessons learned how one can protect your google accounts?
We all can appreciate from this.
Please, share.
Thanks.
This is really weird… I dont expect such things from Google. I always use professional email account for business rather than using such free stuff which will create trouble any time. This is a lesson for everyone to have backup plan for critical emails as well as data/contacts rather than trusting blindly on free service…
It would be good if Google would have provided valid reason for termination of your account.
Google IS Evil – when will people finally realize this?
Yes Google is Evil. This is so Google in the way they have done it before in deindexing Website.
Imagine if this was to happen to some0one who is not as prominent as Loren from SEJ, you would be waiting for months if not years to get your account back.
Because it did happen to Loren, John Mu the Googler came around calling with open hands.
And I am very sorry nothing is free! We are all Google customers if we use a free service or not. These “free services” are being monetarized by Google with Adsense, that makes it a paid product.
Google is very Evil. Wait till Google controls all data and governments have microchips implanted in humans!
Nothing is Free!
“Just another example as to why no business should be using any of Google’s free services.”
EXACTLY
You base your business on messing with Google’s brain, run your business on free Google tools, and when they find out about you, you whine like a little girl.
There, there…
Hush little girl…
I’m sure they’ll let you have your job at McDonalds back!
How did you get your email back? What was the process?
What the hell, I did not know they were doing such things. So did they tell you why they disabled your account? And they just reinstated your account? Without letting you know anything. I am having some thoughts about Google’s policies.
It’s starting to sound a bit like “Big Brother is Watching You”. Google decides who gets allowed to the club, who does not. Without even the courtesy of telling you what you did wrong…
Good to see that its enabled back again, but its very scary if something like this happens. Google should take more details from their users like confirm with their mobile phone numbers, landline numbers and make sure these users are never disabled by mistake
My account got disabled on October 22, 2008 midnight. Not sure why they did that. I have sent them repeated emails as to what is the problem, but no one responds. At least someone in this group got his/her a/c restored. So at least that is a positive sign!
It has been about 3 months and google have not unblocked my account yet….Google disabled my account for no apparent reason….
actually i am able to use my google account i am not just able to Log into my blogger account using the google account…it says your account have been disabled and there is no way i can contact blogger,,,, i have tried everything and i am still not able to contact blogger to get my account unblocked again…
my blogs are still there one of them is this :
http://www.orkutunderworld.blogpsot.com
but i am not able to update the blog as my account is disabled…
so how can i get my account unblocked ?!?
Please someone help me out….I really need my blogs back…
when google blocked my account i stopped blogging and it has been 3 months that i have stopped blogging…i am not even reading any blogs anymore…It’s like a major part of my life has been stolen from me… :(
Dear Sir / Madam
My Gmail has been block by Google and i would it to be restore. Your help will be appreciated. you may sent my password to pet5769@gmail.com.
Thanking you
Regards
P jacobs