Just for something to think about regarding the disabled/locked accounts, remember that we only hear about those who have the means/social-media following to make a Big Deal about it or those with the right friends inside of Google who might be able to nudge the proper team to take a second look, and the only stories that happen to pop up are "success stories" if I can call them that. As far as I can see, the average person is screwed should The Algorithm (blessed be thy name) decide against them.

Given the scale of Google and how many people have access to the Internet today, I'd generally be willing to bet that there are many, many others with the same fate but who simply can't get enough traction behind them for anyone (let alone Google) to care enough.

> Not really, it's mostly frequency illusion hanging out on HN, but considering Google has multi-billion users, those dozen or so incidents are nothing in comparison.

It's not at all uncommon.

I've done business with Google multiple times in my career, and I could name a dozen such incidents. They're just not public.

For the most part, there wasn't anything the user did; just Google algorithm bugs. In one case, a startup lost all of its data because one Google system expected another Google system to implement a fraud detection measure, and the other Google system didn't. Completely internal to Google, but poof, all of a sudden, account gone, all data gone, and no way to fix it.

In another case, GCE lost a contract worth millions of dollars to AWS because Youtube had algorithm bugs. Poof. Youtube system broke. This was early GCE days, and they were looking for successes, and we were sufficiently high-profile that we had a dedicated engineering team. They pushed on Youtube. Youtube said we weren't important enough to help.

Most of this stuff is either under NDA, or otherwise just private, but it is why my current employer, as a policy, doesn't do business with Google. That's a big contract too; I'm not at a startup right now, but at a big company.

> And name me one other company that provides unlimited free storage

I think you're unintentionally arguing I shouldn't rely on Google-unique features, since I might lose them. I already knew that. I've learned that lesson painfully over, and over, and over, and over, and over.

That hurts Google in B2B. If all customers take that philosophy, Google fundamentally can't have unique, differentiating advantages beyond price. It doesn't matter what unique AI algorithm Googlers come up with for the Google Cloud. I won't use it if I can't count on it still being around when I ship my product. And I can't. The only time I will use Google is if it provides unique customer access (e.g. Android apps or Youtube eyeballs), which hopefully the antitrust thing will help with.