Business Tools Blog

There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I am a huge fan of Google.  I am not a fan of Google Group’s Help Center which is horrid! 

We use Google Groups for meeting agendas, data rooms and for communication.  The tool is great when it works.  Since April, Google Groups has been a nightmare.

In April the links started breaking.  Many users posted to the Google Groups forum.  The only answer we received was from a developer letting us know that Google was aware of the problem and that we shouldn’t start any more discussions on this topic. 

Another user posted a workaround. 

If the file name is less that 10 characters, using only numbers and letter without spaces the links wouldn’t break. 

This workaround was a success, until June.  Now any links on the home page break.  The timing of when the links break is frequent and random.  I haven’t figured out a workaround for this yet, other than to create a backup page. 

Here’s why Google is horrid.   There is no way to reach a human to discuss or report the problem.  The forums may or may not be read by Google.  If Google is reading them, they aren’t responding. 

A month ago, Google had a contact form at  http://groups.google.com/support/bin/request.py

Now when you click on the link, Google says:

We offer email support only for the following cases:

• I accidentally selected the adult content option when I created my group
• My request to add or invite members hasn’t been processed yet
• Why is my account set to autoresponding?
• I’m receiving unwanted email from a Google group and I can’t unsubscribe
• Report abuse and/or a legal matter

It’s a very bad sign when companies - even Google - cut off communication with their customers. I wonder if this is a sign of a bigger change at Google? Maybe the verb will change from “I Googled that information” to “I’ve been Googled” (meaning left in a lurch by Google).

Time will tell.  In the meantime - if anyone at Google is listening … please fix Google Groups so that the links stop breaking.