Google Cloud modifies the abuse prevention process following a viral client complaint

Google Cloud claims to have begun reviewing its abuse prevention process following a complaint from a customer posted on Medium last week that has garnered a lot of criticism of the service.

The post was written by an anonymous administrator overseeing a system that monitors "hundreds of wind turbines and dozens of solar power plants". The administrator said that Google blocked the website, the application and other system services on June 28 without warning because it had detected a "potential suspicious activity".

Google then threatened to permanently close the system, unless the administrator could provide identity documents and other documents. However, things never got to this point because Google responded to the request for help from the administrator and quickly settled the situation.

Now Google is doing damage control to make sure the situation does not happen again and to spread the word to existing and potential customers in the cloud.

Brian Bender, a technical support manager at Google Cloud, writes on Medium that the situation has resulted in a review of his "abuse prevention process." "To prevent this from happening again," said Bender, Google Cloud will "reevaluate the" used "data sources to evaluate potential fraudulent activities," put in place "additional mechanisms for suspicious accounts" and "improve # 39; s efficiency. " the way we communicate account warnings. "

" We sincerely apologize for this problem and are working quickly to make things better, not just for this client but for all GCP clients, "wrote Bender.

The fight is not about technology alone [19659011] The snafu was exactly the kind of news that Google Cloud does not need because it competes with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure for enterprise customers, and highlights a potential weak spot Google's plan of

Diane Greene, CEO of Google Cloud, has often stated that Google has a superior technology and brain than its rivals, but the battle can not be won on Tech Brawn alone.

When it comes to customer service – a key feature for businesses that make a living from a cloud service – Google seems much more vulnerable. In the many discussions about this incident on Reddit and other online forums, a big complaint that has surfaced is the inability of Google Cloud customers to contact customer service representatives in case 39; emergency. Bender did not address this problem in his average post.

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