From the “this is insanely stupid” file comes this situation which I think you will agree is a facepalm moment:
An interior design tools startup called Mosss on Wednesday sued Google to get it to restore its data after someone at the startup accidentally deleted the firm’s G Suite account. In a pro se lawsuit [Warning: PDF] filed in US District Court in Oakland, California, Mosss, under its previous corporate name, Musey Inc., asked Google to help it restore its data…
Initially, the filing says, the company believed Google would be able to help because a customer service representative said he’d deal with the issue. But the cavalry did not arrive… “All efforts failed and at the end we received a one-line email that stated our data was lost and couldn’t be returned to us.”
Except perhaps not. According to the complaint, the company was informed – it’s not clear whether Google or a third-party advised this – that it could seek a subpoena or file a civil lawsuit to access its data. So that’s what it has done.
A lot of companies think the cloud takes away the need for them to make backups of important data. But when they do something dumb, something like this happens. But I will admit that this is the most extreme case of a customer flipping out at a cloud provider that I have heard of. Let this be a lesson to people and companies out there. Just because you are “in the cloud” does not mean that common sense does not apply. You need to make backups of all your data so you don’t become like these people. And people like me laugh at you as a result.