Sean

I greatly sympathise with your thoughts and may well have experienced similar frustration with use of Google's products.

I use a number of them, but none for which I actually pay money to Google directly.

As I understand the Google business model, it does not include any "customer service" operation whatsoever.

We may use that as a reason to choose not to use its products, however that is not easy.

Many businesses are choosing to dispense with offering customer support by telephone. This can be very expensive to provide, and even more expensive if it is to be done effectively using representatives who are genuinely able to address the issues that customers may raise.

I share your regret at this, as I too like to have a proper relationship with every company with whom I do business. I must however, no matter how reluctantly, accept the reality of how things are today.

On the other hand as a customer, I cannot object to Google's pricing policy, although it does raise some serious issues. Perhaps if its customers were prepared to pay more in order to fund an effective telephone support operation then things could be different. One option would be for telephone support to be provided using premium rate numbers!

(Corrected - apologies for typos) D

The only Google connection I have is the googlemail address required to access Android Market Google Play for my phone. I never give it to anyone and it remains dormant, I have huge issues with the disregard for privacy that many of the web companies like Google and Facebook have and avoid them wherever possible - I have my own domain  with web and email hosting, so I don't need it, and as the admin of a forum elsewhere I have huge problems with spammers using Google email addresses, which really makes the service look bad.