On multiple times, I, like many of you, have asked “why on Earth is Gmail still in beta?” It’s been around for over three years now, don’t you think it’s about time? I thought it was, but now I’m starting to understand why Gmail is still in beta. There are numerous people over at the Gmail Help Discussion Group reporting that when they try to login to their Gmail account, they get an error message saying that their account has been disabled. As you can imagine, the people who are receiving these error messages are frustrated and can do nothing but sit and wait for for Google to determine a problem and hopefully get their accounts up and running without the loss of any data.
Over at the Google Group, some of the users are a little frantic because they’ve got “eBay stuff that is going to bounce back” or one person is applying for jobs and is expecting replies to setup interviews. The problem is, not only is the account simply not working, but anyone who sends a message to a disabled account gets the message sent back to them. These users won’t know who tried to contact them, and what messages they missed. Other users are reporting that emails they sent in the time shortly before their accounts were disabled aren’t being received on the other end. As one person said “this is completely unacceptable” and I have to agree.
The Gmail Help Center isn’t of much help to these users either. Under the “account disabled” section, it explains that “In most cases, Gmail accounts are disabled because of a perceived violation of Gmail Terms of Use. Google reserves the right to suspend a Gmail account or the entire Google Account if Gmail Terms of Use are violated. Google also has the right to terminate your account at any time, for any reason, with or without notice.” When users find no help in the help center, some of tried to contact Google over the phone, but without luck.
It appears the current batch of accounts that were disabled fall under that last line where Google explains they can do this for any reason and without notice because I’m extremely doubtful that hundreds of people violated the Gmail terms of use. The first person reported a problem on December 5th which means we’re going on two days without a fix. That seems like a long time for Google to not publicly address the situation and let users know what’s going on.
Wasn’t it about this time last year that Gmail was making emails disappear? It sure was! Looking back at all of the other Gmail Outages that have caused frustration, I think we can answer the question of why Gmail is still in beta…
Source: Mashable
Quite simple really, Google will claim they are in violation of TOS because they are using too much of their ‘unlimited’ account space.
“Google also has the right to terminate your account at any time, for any reason, with or without notice.”
I should probably stop speaking ill of Google then, before delete my account.
Seriously though, every single mail I received since May 2004 is stored in my Gmail account. It’d be a disaster if I lost these!
Although that sounds very much like the stuff that big companies do, I don’t think it’s even possible to use that much account space unless you use GDrive or something. I mean, how much space does a simple e-mail take? 5KB?
I have a HUGE BONE to pick with Google and their “help” system. At the very beginning of the latest flurry of very cool upgrades to the gmail system, there was a flaw that I discovered.
When your selecting multiple addresses to send your emails too, you choose a letter and a list of email addresses with that letter as their beginning letter pops up. Great idea! Except that the letter stays in one part of the display and the newly chosen address add’s itself to another. I could just manually hunt out and deleted the extra letters for a few weeks while I contact Google and…
I did have a rambling, angry post, but no one wants to read that.
(edited and condensed)
When I tried to contact Google, I found a never ending loop of webpages that really told me nothing. In fact they just cycle through each other, trying to get you to their Help Group, which was no help at all. I finally found someone else with my problem in the Help Group and someone had given a guess answer, but it wasn’t even close to a permanent fix. (Although it probably did help him with his totally unrealted problem)
So what did I do? I contacted Google. No really, I did. I had to look for a very long time and resort to deceit, but I got through. Go to the Main google help page and ask “Why can’t I contact Google”. A response comes up saying, use the ‘contact us’ link below. This ‘contact us’ link wasn’t there before I did this. I checked it, twice, and it just magically appeared. You are then asked 3 or 4 questions, the magic question is the “Would You Like To Share Your Positive Google Story…” or something like that. I had tried the others, so I tried it as a last resort and IT WORKED!!! So I complained and… the problem is now fixed.
See Google, that wasn’t very painful was it?
And i’m still a Gmail fan, but please, please, PLEASE have a care. I’m an adult. I’ve been to college, twice. I have a house, a car and three TVs. I diserve to be treated like an adult. If I can’t get the respect I feel I deserve, then I’ll go somewhere else. Heck, I’ll pull out my Visual Studio 2005 Standard (I know it’s a bit rusty) and make my own….
Or someone else will…
And they’ll take their customer complaints right square on the chin! Like the rest of the tech world does.
google’s storage space is not “unlimited”. Its 5GB+ right now. So, u r free to fill it up, it just u wont receive emails if its full.
So, i dont think that point is valid.
I’d be pretty upset too if I lost all of my important saved messages which is why I’m thankful I’ve never realy had any serious problems.
I think he was being quasi facetious….note that he put unlimited in quotes….<_<.
“I mean, how much space does a simple e-mail take? 5KB?”
True, but people that run blogs, podcasts, or other things that result in them getting like 1000 emails a day, that can fill up fairly quickly.
Sounds to me like a business major…
I forward a copy of all the e-mails to my Gmail account to another online e-mail account, just in case I can’t log into my Gmail. I haven’t had to use this backup account for a very long time now, but it’s nice to know it’s there. It’s very easy to set up, and free of course, unlike forwarding mail using Yahoo.
The
who complain about Gmail should postulate for a job at Google just saying they’ll solve the problems the company is certainly not aware of… 
I joined a little before that, but I don’t keep all of my email. That would be way too much for me to keep organized. I’m pretty comfortable using the Delete button.
They definitely need a better way for people to talk with the engineers, and I think that is something they should strongly focus on. Would it be all that difficult for them to hire a few helping hands to spend some time in the Google Groups answering questions?
That’s one way to fix your qualms with Google…go work for them.
Sorry
that’s already done through my job! Try something else! 
That’s the bad side of all the free mail providers. Best would be to get a domain name, use Google Apps and save all mail copies on your local computer.