Yep, I'm going to be migrating my email off of gmail soon as well.
#1 rule when you get as large as Google is not to burn your users trust. This was about a big of a screw-up as you could do there. You should keep your different services separate and isolated and only ban in the areas of business where it impacts things negatively.
To what? Gmail is so effortless to use. I've been considering running my own email servers because of things like this (and privacy) but I have never found anything as good.
It was the other way around for me. But regardless, the best part of owning your own domain - if you don't like your mail provider, just change the MX records to a new one.
Heck, I could run my own mail server if I wanted (been there, don't want to go there again, but could if I really HAD to).
I didn't use the migration, so can't speak to that. I just had to set up the DNS entries on my domain. Granted, there are a fair few (MX, TXT, SPF, SRV, A, CNAME..), but there's good documentation and it only took me about 30 minutes to set everything up.
Of course, I only have one account (lastname@personaldomain.com) and therefore didn't have to deal with setting up multiple users, migrating data etc. I also set up 2FA for my account.
I did all this over one weekend (from looking at different providers, to signing up for O365, configuring etc), and haven't had to touch anything since. The only question I had was related to billing (I went from a month-to-month to a yearly account) and that was answered quickly by a real human being.
Have you tried Fastmail? I've found them to be very good for many years now, although if you don't like their UI and are sort of old school, try their classic.fastmail.fm older interface.
Another choice is Office365. I use my own domain, with O365 providing the email services. I pay $60 a year for the cheapest plan (with Exchange). I migrated from Google over a year ago, and have slowly moved all my accounts to my new email. It's not something you can do overnight, but if you stick to it, it's not hard to do.
One time I had a question, I was able to use the web interface to request support, and a real human called me back in 10 minutes. It wasn't a very complex question, so I can't say if he was super knowledgeable, but he certainly seemed like he knew the platform, and was able to answer my question in just a few minutes.
Oh, and I know this is a throwaway account, but I'm not a shill for MS. This is just my personal experience with O365, and YMMV - it's worked well enough for me.
Microsoft will happily send you up a creek if you are a large paying enterprise. Don't think you'll get useful support if you pay $60 a year. Their cloud stuff breaks all the time and the typical support offer is to wait and see if it's better tomorrow.
Why does Google care about the trust of scammers? Some customers are not worth the effort. This time it was a mass phone scalping scheme, next time it might be a fraudulent click scheme. Google is better off if people like that never use one of their products again.
It's as if some person kicked out of a store for shoplifting swore they'd never shop there ever again. Good!
Because they falsely accuse people of things, often—especially with AdSense—and that's it, you have zero recourse, your account is permanently dead. There are a ton of people who have been accused of invalid click fraud on AdSense and got banned, but who never clicked their own ads. The common Google and Google fanboy reply is to dismiss those claims and say people are lying, but I can tell you from personal experience that while maybe some are, not all are.
Google's Adsense is a fraud outright. I run a small news website where few people contribute. Almost all content is original. Adsense never approved by website claiming the site has no original content.
The answer is to work on the accuracy of the process, not to throw up their hands and stop trying to ban scammers.
For this story in particular did anyone come forward to say that they had been banned that didn't participate in the scalping scam?
There's a culture of impunity out there on the internet were people think they can cheat the system and nothing will ever come it (think manufactured spending for example). Well, sometimes something does come of it. Don't do the crime, if you can't do the time.
They will never be accurate enough, because it costs too much. The easier and more just solution is to just ban people off of the ad platform, and leave the gmail & other services alone.
If there is email abuse, then you ban from gmail, youtube abuse, from youtube, etc.
Buying a piece of hardware and reselling something you paid full sticker price for is now cheating the system? That's quite an expansive definition you have.
Sure, but if you steal a piece of candy from a store, they don't burn down your house and remove your mailbox. And delete every record of your existence.
Prevent them from ordering another phone from the Google store? Totally, but this went beyond that.
It'd be like losing your voting rights due to getting a speeding ticket.
Google is technically right here but the reason you're seeing such a visceral reaction is that people care about their data a lot and having a relatively unrelated event wipe that out is a big overreach.
No, it doesn't need to be proportionate. They aren't the government. If you try to cheat me and I catch you, it is totally my right, totally reasonable, rational even, for me to decide I never want to do business of any sort with you again.
Sure, and it's totally reasonable, rational even, for other customers to see what Google is doing and react by choosing not to use their services. Nobody is saying Google overstepped their bounds legally; yes, they are totally allowed to choose who their customers are.
That said, if you as a company are going to completely destroy someone's online life over a single incident, then it's totally fair for others to be weary of using your services.
#1 rule when you get as large as Google is not to burn your users trust. This was about a big of a screw-up as you could do there. You should keep your different services separate and isolated and only ban in the areas of business where it impacts things negatively.