When Free Sucks: Google are you Listening? #WhenFreeSucks

I have been singing the praises of Google for years.  I have talked about the brilliance of their FREE model.  When Chris Anderson’s book, ‘FREE’ came out I purchased the book the first week.  Whenever I needed to search for anything on the net I would always go to Google.com.  Then the unthinkable happens, all of my videos were deleted from my YouTube account which is owned by Google. (Note:  All of my videos were in total compliance with their terms of service.)

In an instant my YouTube account with over 13,000 views was deleted. In my mind Google is a great company so I knew they are going to respond swiftly when I contacted them about this simple mistake they made.  I have entered questions into their online forum, emailed questions to YouTube, and called the Google office only to get totally ignored.  I can’t begin to explain to you the level of frustration that I felt because I have gotten ZERO response from one of my favorite Brand.  Over the years I have put a great deal of trust into ‘FREE’ resources like YouTube.  I now understand there is always a tradeoff to ‘FREE’ and one of the main reasons is:

  • No Customer Service: Humans don’t typically service other humans that don’t pay.

The Impact to your Personal Brand and Dependence on Google

How dependent is your business on Google?  I am really starting to re-think how I build my personal brand with Google and other FREE tools.

Some of the Many Google Services that I use

  • YouTube Videos
  • Gmail account emails
  • Google Docs
  • Google Calendars
  • Google Checkout

If your account is temporarily or permanently compromised what is the impact to your personal brand/business?  I walked away from my FREE experience saying I would rather have a paid service that I could hold someone accountable.

Tips for Managing you Personal Brand with FREE

  • Own Your Hub: As a personal brand you need to own the main hub of their online activity. (i.e. www.ChrisBrogan.com)
  • Back-up Everything: Anything in FREE services needs to be backed up:  videos, documents, important emails, etc.
  • Re-Evaluate your Dependence on FREE: Re-Evaluate everything that you have in FREE social networking sites or other FREE services you use.
  • Carefully Select Account Managers: If you have a third party managing any of your social network accounts be very careful.  Your reputation can be compromised and your account suspended or deleted because of inappropriate activity (anything that violates their Terms of Service)

Blog Post on FREE Services and Frustrations

I write this blog post to get you thinking and planning so that you can be proactive in managing your online personal brand.  It is also validates to me that nothing in life is FREE there is always a cost.  It is just a matter of who is paying, when they pay and how much.  Does this mean to stop using Google or other FREE services like YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter?  The answer is no but you have to manage your dependence.

Would you be willing to pay for a services that are currently FREE (i.e. YouTube) for customer service and the ability to hold someone accountable?

(Photo Credit: Google Logo Render by mark knol)

Subscribe to our RSS feed or E-mail Updates!

  • http://beyondprettythings.com Vincent Hunt

    Wow,

    This post totally resonates with me. Recently I had a similar incident happen with one of my FREE accounts. Through a LOT of hard work, a little loss of sleep and some pushing and shoving, I got “my stuff” back, BUT it was not without a lot of time and resources expended.

    This spawns another thought though, a much bigger idea perhaps… Are we going to see a second “dot com bust”? Are we going to see all of the innovations that hit the web in the last 3 – 4 years that offer us “free utopia”, that have no real revenue model implode?

    Curious… Feel your pain.

  • http://beyondprettythings.com Vincent Hunt

    Wow,

    This post totally resonates with me. Recently I had a similar incident happen with one of my FREE accounts. Through a LOT of hard work, a little loss of sleep and some pushing and shoving, I got “my stuff” back, BUT it was not without a lot of time and resources expended.

    This spawns another thought though, a much bigger idea perhaps… Are we going to see a second “dot com bust”? Are we going to see all of the innovations that hit the web in the last 3 – 4 years that offer us “free utopia”, that have no real revenue model implode?

    Curious… Feel your pain.

  • http://topsy.com/www.brandcampu.com/2010/07/when-free-sucks-google-are-you-listening-whenfreesucks/?utm_source=pingback&utm_campaign=L2 Tweets that mention When Free Sucks: Google are you Listening? #WhenFreeSucks | Brand Camp University – Personal Branding 2.0 — Topsy.com

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Hajj Flemings and others. Hajj Flemings said: My Blog Post: When Free Sucks: Google are you Listening? #WhenFreeSucks http://bit.ly/auaM5x [...]

  • http://hajjflemings.com/ Hajj E. Flemings

    Vincent,

    You bring up a great point. What is going to happen after we have invested our business, brands, and life into social networks or FREE services that will basically OWN you. What is next? That is a scary reality that we have to be prepared to deal with.

  • http://hajjflemings.com/ Hajj E. Flemings

    Vincent,

    You bring up a great point. What is going to happen after we have invested our business, brands, and life into social networks or FREE services that will basically OWN you. What is next? That is a scary reality that we have to be prepared to deal with.

  • http://theideasthatstick.com Lawrence Riddick

    This has happened to many people on many different FREE services. I can only imagine how bad it feels to go through this. You can’t get those views back. There is a service called Backupify (www.backupify.com) that backs up your social media accounts and things of that sort. This is a great service, but why can’t Google and these other companies just let you do this. Unfortunately they do not backup YouTube.

  • http://theideasthatstick.com Lawrence Riddick

    This has happened to many people on many different FREE services. I can only imagine how bad it feels to go through this. You can’t get those views back. There is a service called Backupify (www.backupify.com) that backs up your social media accounts and things of that sort. This is a great service, but why can’t Google and these other companies just let you do this. Unfortunately they do not backup YouTube.

  • http://socialcomputingplatforms.com/?p=21841 Social Computing Platforms

    [...] Read the original post: When Free Sucks: Google are you Listening? #WhenFreeSucks | Brand … [...]

  • http://hajjflemings.com/ Hajj E. Flemings

    Lawrence,

    I appreciate the information on Backupify. It is my first time hearing about this service I will check it out.

  • http://hajjflemings.com/ Hajj E. Flemings

    Lawrence,

    I appreciate the information on Backupify. It is my first time hearing about this service I will check it out.

  • http://bkaeg.org/blog AG

    Hmmm. I am going to take a slightly more contrarian stance. Though, I leverage so-called web2.0 services, I maintain that the use of data brokers will always be fraught with peril. GOOG and most other (eg Odeo, flickr, etc) will likely never safeguard content which does not bare a service level agreement. It would be naive to think otherwise. So, what are we to do? As you probably have already done.. Purchase a domain and store your irreplaceable data locally on your own disk space.. The cost of 1TB is roughly $99.00 US. A wise investment indeed. It may also be useful to gain a level of redundancy with service like rsync.net or Amazon S3. Feel free to drop me a scribe, would be happy to chat with you one-one-one :-)

  • http://bkaeg.org/blog AG

    Hmmm. I am going to take a slightly more contrarian stance. Though, I leverage so-called web2.0 services, I maintain that the use of data brokers will always be fraught with peril. GOOG and most other (eg Odeo, flickr, etc) will likely never safeguard content which does not bare a service level agreement. It would be naive to think otherwise. So, what are we to do? As you probably have already done.. Purchase a domain and store your irreplaceable data locally on your own disk space.. The cost of 1TB is roughly $99.00 US. A wise investment indeed. It may also be useful to gain a level of redundancy with service like rsync.net or Amazon S3. Feel free to drop me a scribe, would be happy to chat with you one-one-one :-)

blog comments powered by Disqus