Lauren's Blog: The Helpful Google Ombudsman (Who Doesn't Exist)
https://lauren.vortex.com/2025/01/03/google-ombudsman
I just had a good laugh. Someone asked me this morning how they could
reach the "Google Ombudsman" for help with an account lockout issue.
And I laughed not because their situation was funny, but because of
the sad fact that I've been pushing for Google to establish an
Ombudsman (or these days, often called Ombudsperson) role, for ...
well ... decades. I've pushed from the outside. When I had the
opportunity, I've pushed from the inside. Obviously, I never had any
luck with this.
But I did get curious again today. For years, my essays on this topic
ranked very high on Google Search. What about now?
Another laugh! I searched for:
google ombudsman
and a blog post of mine on this topic from 2009 is still on the first
page of search results -- 16 years later!
This was actually superseded by my more recent posts about this, such
as 2017's "Brief Thoughts on a Google Ombudsman and User Trust":
https://lauren.vortex.com/2017/06/12/brief-thoughts-on-a-google-ombudsman-and-user-trust
But the story is still exactly the same as it was originally -- Google
has never been willing to budge on this issue, even as the need for
such a role (or roles) has dramatically increased over the years, not
just for issues related to account lockouts and other traditional
Google user problems that cry out for valid escalation paths, but of
course now related to the rapidly rising range of AI-related
controversies.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Very sad.
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
[email protected] (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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