My mom’s Gmail account got banned for no reason whatsoever last week. Since then they removed her recovery number and 2FA as they ‘looked suspicious’.

Access to nearly 20 years of emails, photos and docs gone in an instant.

It’s been particularly painful because she used Google to log in to everything too, including for health records that she needs.

There is no way of contacting anyone at Google about it and apparently nothing that can be done anyway. It’s absolutely devastating. They’re still charging her for Google One and she can’t even manage the subscription because she can’t log in.

I urge anyone reading this to do a Google Takeout request and make a local backup of all the data they hold.

No one has actually had their account banned for this, Google just disables their Antigravity access due to breaking TOS. People just repeat the line that “Google bans accounts” because it’s a bigger headline draw.

I haven't touched Google's AI suite due to this. I need to migrate my email away from Google - the stakes are too high.

Luckily I use a custom domain so accounts won't need to be updated, just emails exported and DNS changed.

This feels like the sort of thing that needs to be legislated. Banning accounts after breaking ToS is a pretty common behavior across many companies. The fact a Google account ends up being used for multiple products makes it more interesting but the overall problem here is not unique to them.

Good argument for breaking up the company.

Big companies are all becoming user hostile these days. They act like the customer is an inconvenience rather than a fundamental part of their business. Every interaction exudes this feeling that your primary role is to serve as an unwanted impediment to money flowing out of your bank account and into theirs.