How Google Screws Paying Customers

If you use Gmail, this was a banner week for you. For the first time in years, you can now skin your Gmail without the need to use plugins, extensions or CSS hacks. This is a feature that I have been craving for months, nay, years.

While I’ve appreciated the efforts of amateur coders and some were able to create some cool themes for Gmail, they were always unreliable, especially as Gmail updated its interface, and the selection was always weak. So, news that Google had launched not one, but 30 plus new themes for its mail service had me, and others like me, dancing in the street.

But alas, my dancing was short-lived. When I logged into my Gmail account, it was not there. Even now, after nearly two days, the option is still not there. My wife is tempting me with her shiny new theme and most of my friends have theirs, but I am alone.

The reason is that I am a Google Apps user. Though I don’t pay for my Google Apps account, many of my friends do and they too are without themes, as well as Labs and other popular Gmail features.

We Google Apps users are getting a raw deal. Whether we are paid or unpaid, we are more intimately tied to Google than most Gmail users and we are getting an inferior product to those that just signed up for a @gmail.com account.

This is no way to treat your customer and is an excellent example of why Google should never, ever, get in the business of customer service. They simply have no clue what they are doing.

Behind the Times

Google Apps is in a pretty sorry state, especially its Gmail offering. Google Labs, for example, is yet to make a consistent appearance in most Google App Gmail accounts. Initially announced to regular Gmail users in June, even as late as this month, there are still many Google App accounts without the Labs feature.

My account, for example, had the Labs feature earlier this week. I enabled it and activated a handful of the options, but the Labs setting has again disappeared.

Strangely though, the Labs features I enabled, including the Signature fixes and the Canned Responses feature, remain active on my account. However, I can not enable new features nor disable the ones that I have activated. Luckily, I have no desire to do either.

Then along comes Themes. To say that that I’ve been waiting for themes for a long time would be a grand understatement. The visual monotony of Gmail is what has pushed me to do much of my emailing through Thunderbird or other email programs (at least Google Apps has IMAP support).

However, Google has not begun porting themes over the Google App users. In fact, in a recent interview, a Google employee said that the theme feature is not available for Google Apps customer and gave no indication if or when that might change.

But despite this strange reluctance to incorporate new features into Google Apps, we already have the new Voice/Video Chat feature and received IMAP support almost immediately.

But while I use the IMAP feature regularly, I can not imagine a world where I would want to do voice and video chat in my browser. I see very little reason for this feature, that is, unless Gmail gains access to Yahoo, MSN and Skype, thus replacing Adium and other IM tools.

However, that isn’t likely going to happen I’m afraid. In the meantime, Apps users get all of the garbage features quickly while waiting an eternity for the ones that might actually be useful.

The Beta Testers

One possible “out” a bystander might give Google is that Google Apps is for enterprise customers and that, since these new features have not been properly tested, they can not be used on the Apps domain. It sounds plausible, but I see three flaws immediately.

1. Beta Testers: Are we really supposed to believe that the millions and millions of regular Gmail users are nothing more than beta testers for the Google Apps crowd? That makes almost no sense. Though some open source products (including most Linux distros) do release a version to the public but not the enterprise customers, we are not talking about an operating system where a beta version can eat all of your files and email porn to your grandmother. We’re talking about pretty themes. How destructive can they be if they go wrong? Either millions of Gmail users are in dire risk of their email exploding or this theory falls flat.
2. Options Enabled: Google App users have an option to enable themselves to receive all of the latest features and most, I imagine, have it turned on. By ticking that box the admins say that they want to be beta testers, whether or not Google thinks they should be. The problem is that, even with the box ticked, the new features never show up.
3. No Retraining: I can understand withholding features from corporate users considering that there might be a retraining issue. When you don’t have to provide support, as with regular Gmail users, you don’t pay for the heartburn users experience. However, the features do not require any retraining at all, they are merely added optional features. Don’t know how to use Labs? Don’t enable it. Don’t want to learn a new theme? Don’t select a different one. It is that simple. Google should have almost no tech support calls asking for help with these features, but they are clearly handling many about why the features are not there.

The reason that Google Apps users get shortchanged is pretty clear to me, Google Apps users have a different server and a slightly different code setup than most Gmail users. As such, they get seconds on every new Gmail feature. Paid or not, they are second priority. It is that simple.

The Problem With All of This

The problem is straightforward enough. Whether you use the free version of Google Apps or the paid version, it doesn’t matter. By using Google Apps you have shown a great deal of trust in Google and are closer to them than those who have simply signed up for a Gmail account. You are trusting them to be a part of your site in an intimate way that Gmail users don’t at this time.

The repayment for this is that you get an inferior version of the product that more casual users get. This is essentially Google thank you for your trust and your money by giving you a crappier product. The message that this sends those that invest time and money into Google’s problems is pretty clear: “We prefer those who have no real commitment to our product.”

Is this to say that the reverse should be true and Google Apps users should get the features first? Of course not. That would be foolish on many levels. However, the proximity, reliance and cold hard cash Google Apps users bring to the table should at least give them equal footing, despite the slightly different code base and smaller numbers.

However, most likely, Google Apps is not weighed into the current upgrade process and is more of an afterthought, something that has me worried and should have all of the paying customers outraged.

Conclusions

So what’s next? Well, I could just forward all of my Google Apps stuff BACK to my personal account, reversing what I did about a year ago. However, there are many advantages to being on Google Apps, namely that Google is your email host so, should your domain have issues or need to be moved, your email will remain intact. It also reduces the burden on your server and you still get to keep your precious IMAP while using the best Webmail interface around.

Still, a simple forward command would suffice for most people, just redirect your email to your Gmail account and then set up your Gmail to answer your email as if it were from your server. Not an elegant solution to be certain, but a workable one.

So I’ll be pondering this for the next few days, I’ll have an answer for you soon enough…