Sphinn features the unfortunate story of a guy named Loren Baker who woke up one morning to find that his Google Account -- Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Google Talk, and all -- terminated. He has no idea why this has happened and has written an open letter to Google to assess the damage that was done, since now Loren cannot communicate with his clients and his business activity has been halted.
It's deeply upsetting that Google has done this on more than one occasion and seems to have done nothing to rectify the issue. Personally, as I noted in the Sphinn discussion yesterday, I have no idea why there appears to be a handful of Google employees who are trigger happy, but this may be a good time to actually capitalize on the recession that is happening and take those employees out of play. Of course, that may be a little harsh, but I have to ask: what did Loren do that is so wrong? He can't work now either.
Some have criticized Loren for actually using free services for mission critical business practices. That's a fair statement, but how many people do you know would abuse their "free" account to the point that it would be terminated -- especially if they're this heavily dependent upon it? It still seems like a mixup on Google's side, and some staffers there should actually be held accountable.
It's time for Google to be a lot more transparent about this than they have been. This should not happen again to anyone.
Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.
