NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] "Frustrated": The Results of My "Google Issues and Problems Survey"
"Frustrated": The Results of My "Google Issues and Problems Survey"
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000944.html
Last Saturday, as a followup to "Why Google Needs an Ombudsman - Now
More Than Ever" ( http://j.mp/GIlK6f ), I posted my "Google Issues
and Problems Survey" ( http://j.mp/GOlN6E ).
Well over 1000 submissions have already been received, and after
scanning through these rapidly, the trends are already clear enough to
discuss some of the findings (in fact, the pattern of replies was
already pretty obvious within the first 24 hours).
First, a few important provisos. This was what's known as a
"self-selected" survey. This means that only people sufficiently
motivated to participate chose to do so -- there was no "reaching out"
to the population at large. This has the effect that results cannot
be viewed as being suitable for accurate statistical generalization
beyond the set of respondents themselves.
Also, by its very nature -- "issues and problems" -- this survey would
not be expected to capture the opinions of people who do not have
significant Google-related problems or issues to report.
Finally, the open-ended nature of the survey questions resulted in
many people submitting what amounted to detailed essays discussing
their concerns, often co-mingling various of the survey questions into
combined answers. This has made quantitative analysis of those
answers problematic -- so I'll be concentrating on a more qualitative
discussion here.
Around 22% of the submissions involved privacy-related concerns of one
sort or another. Of these, it appears that around 73% of the
described issues were based on misunderstandings of actual Google
privacy policies (including related confusion seeded by media articles
and users misinterpreting actual Google policies).
In many cases users claimed they had attempted to obtain clarification
of their concerns from Google directly without receiving substantive
replies, and/or had attempted to obtain information from Google Help
Forums -- but received no answers, inadequate answers, or conflicting
answers from Forum participants. Usually no official responses were
forthcoming, according to these submissions.
Of the 27% of privacy-related concerns that did not appear to relate
to misunderstandings or misinterpretation of Google polices, a variety
of issues were reported. These ranged from topics associated with
search results, to Gmail issues, and a notable number of people
expressing consternation about specific data in Google Maps, Street
View, and/or Google Earth.
These map-related concerns usually involved either claims of
inaccurate data being displayed, or accusations that Google had
ignored repeated requests to remove particular Street View imagery and
the like.
Many of these submissions were from persons who appeared to be very
upset with (what they felt to be) potentially serious privacy-related
issues, who recounted in extremely lengthy detail the history of their
attempts to contact Google, and receiving no response, or
non-substantive "form letters" with no appeal or "escalation"
mechanisms noted, and so on. Some mentioned trying to call or even
visit Google in desperation to reach someone for help.
The 78% of submissions that did not primarily involve privacy turned
out to be somewhat similar to the privacy-related concerns in
significant aspects. There was a roughly 55/45 split between reports
that appeared to be based on misinterpretations or misunderstandings,
vs. other issues.
While there were concerns and problems noted related to Maps and such
in this latter category as well, there many more issues raised about
Gmail (especially sudden mass loss of email) and Google Voice.
Submissions like these tended to be quite boisterous regarding the
importance of email and voicemail, and frustration over the inability
to reach anyone at Google to provide useful assistance.
A particular Google Voice aspect that frequently was mentioned was
problems related to Sprint/Google voice integration, with users
claiming Sprint had told them to contact Google for help, and then
being unable to obtain useful assistance from the Google side.
Various of these users said they had simply given up.
One case I looked at in more detail involved someone who said he had
been trying for a long period to fix a Google Search result problem
that he said was very disruptive to his business, but he could find
nobody at Google directly or in Google Help forums who could or would
assist. The search results in question did seem very odd at first
glance, but it took me only about 10 minutes of digging to determine
that his problem was almost certainly DNS -- not specifically
Google -- related. If someone had helped him with this early on, he
wouldn't have spent a long period in public forums condemning Google.
There were also a variety of issues raised about various paid Google
ad services and other fee-based Google services, mostly too detailed
to go into here right now. Numerous of these involved search and ad
ranking controversies of various sorts -- many of which I would
classify as misunderstandings.
In a number of instances, business owners reported that they had
provided credit card information to Google to "claim" their business
addresses and a designated amount of free Google advertising, had
never used the advertising, but still found Google-related charges on
their credit cards that they had been unable to reach anyone at Google
to remove. I asked one of these persons why -- if all else had
failed -- they had not filed a dispute with their credit card company or
bank? He replied that he saw no point since "there's no way I'm going
to win against Google."
In both the privacy and non-privacy categories, the twin issues of not
actually understanding Google policies or services, and/or
overwhelming frustration with trying to get substantive assistance for
Google-related problems, came up again and again.
Customers of paid Google services seemed relatively more satisfied
with their support options, but many of these users claimed that they
used both free and paid Google services, and found even the paid
support to still be seriously lacking at this time across the universe
of Google-related issues.
A very significant number of respondents (including those currently
using free Google services exclusively) specifically noted that they'd
be willing to pay (new) reasonable fees (either monthly or
per-incident) to get meaningful assistance when there are problems, as
exemplified by this quote from a survey participant who explicitly
granted me permission to publish his comments when he sent in his
form:
"... It's a sign of what I think is a greater problem with Google:
there is absolutely no way to get support for ANY issue, policy or
technical, for most of Google's services. For all my issues, I'd be
willing to pay a small monthly fee (or even a one-time "trouble" fee)
if there was a way to get the issue resolved."
That's probably enough of a survey overview for now. Once again, I
want to emphasize what I said at the beginning of this posting. This
was a self-selected survey, that by definition only encompasses users
with problems or issues that they chose to report. Any
generalizations to a larger universe of Google users would be entirely
inappropriate.
However, it does seem reasonable to note the common threads that run
through these submissions. It is certainly the case that it's a
matter of major concern when significant numbers of users and
customers are misunderstanding your services or policies, or are
having longstanding problems that in many cases could have actually
been easily understood or resolved under the appropriate information
and/or support structures.
It is from this category of "lost users" -- who usually could have
been helped very early on -- from which often come negative stories to
friends and business colleagues, and complaints that trigger
misleading, sensationalistic media reports, angry letters to
politicians, and other unnecessary damaging impacts that in most cases
could have been relatively easily avoided.
The single factor that stands out above all others in the survey
results is that -- novice or expert, confused or "right on
the mark" -- users abhor the frustrating feeling that they are
being essentially ignored when they have issues or problems related
to services that they use regularly and have come to depend upon.
Solving this problem isn't simple, and isn't without costs. But the
benefits for everyone concerned would seem enormously important in the
long run.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org
Founder:
- Data Wisdom Explorers League: http://www.dwel.org
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://vortex.com/g+lauren / Twitter: http://vortex.com/t-lauren
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
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