Apps For Domains is a MAJOR failing of AppEngine

[Brandon Wirtz]

This is more of a rant, than anything that you will likely encounter….

 

I use the Adwords API for a lot of things, mainly advising clients that spend north of a half million dollars a month with adwords. (I only get a licensing fee on the app sorry).

 

Recently, because Google changed its policies on unified logins, when I logged in to Google Voice it made me migrate my account. After the migration some of my Google Unified Logins weren’t Migrated. Adwords being a primary example. And My Apps For Domains became disassociated with the Account.

 

You can’t call apps for domains without a pin. If you do get someone on the phone using the pin from your other account they tell you they can’t help you because that account isn’t associated with your login. When you call adwords they tell you that your account has to get support from apps for domains. 

 

As a Result I’ve had a week plus of downtime on my Adwords App, because of Apps For Domains.  I could move the App to use a different API-key on another account, but because of the way the outsourced company I used developed the app I’d have to manually update credentials in every install. 

 

Awesome sauce I know.  But the over Arching Theme is that Adwords support while unhelpful have been friendly, though they will only move my issue forward at the rate of 1 email a day, and are trying to support another groups mess. The 6 plus people I have talked to in Apps for Domains support, have been rude enough that they actually hung up on me, put me on hold for 2+ hours, and told me “I was beyond help”.  I realize that for $10 you can’t afford to support me, but for the amount I spend elsewhere, be nice.

 

This experience with AppsForDomains has soured me towards recommending GAE more than the change in pricing.  More than the Drama of moving from MS to HR. More than the “you can’t migrate off it”.   If I have a week of downtime because tech support won’t even talk to me.  That’s a Far larger concern than any of the pricing or infrastructure issues.  1 week of down time means that Four 9s of uptime is going to take a millennia to get back to.

 

-Brandon

 

Brandon Wirtz BlackWaterOps: President / Lead Mercenary
Work: 510-992-6548 Toll Free: 866-400-4536 IM: dra...@gmail.com (Google Talk) Skype: drakegreene BlackWater Ops

 

 

 

[Jeff Schnitzer]

I'd like to give a huge +1 to this.  The Google Apps system is a trainwreck.  I made the terrible mistake of moving some of my personal domains to Google Apps and now:

 * I'm in some sort of Catch-22 that locks me out of my adwords account.  Not a big deal (it wasn't important) but I can't create a new adwords account (seriously, not even by creating new Google Accounts) and I can't delete the old one.  I like to think I'm a smart guy, but this is worse than one of those chinese puzzles because I'm not 100% certain there is a solution.  Support?  Nonexistant.

 * The huge delays on moving domains around in Google Apps is lunacy.  Let's say you're running a GAE app on a doman configured as a domain alias for Google Apps Domain A and you want to split it out into its own Google Apps Domain (ie, you sold the product).  Impossible without a week's downtime while the domain releases from A.  WTF?

 * Don't get me started on the big problems I've had with logins working some places and not others (eg, Google Groups).

Maybe this isn't quite the place for my rant, but since GAE depends on Google Apps, it would be nice if Google Apps had the kind of support that we expect from GAE.

Jeff

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[Jeff Schnitzer]

On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 5:45 PM, Jeff Schnitzer <je...@infohazard.org> wrote:

I'd like to give a huge +1 to this.  The Google Apps system is a trainwreck.  I made the terrible mistake of moving some of my personal domains to Google Apps and now:

 * I'm in some sort of Catch-22 that locks me out of my adwords account.  Not a big deal (it wasn't important) but I can't create a new adwords account (seriously, not even by creating new Google Accounts) and I can't delete the old one.  I like to think I'm a smart guy, but this is worse than one of those chinese puzzles because I'm not 100% certain there is a solution.  Support?  Nonexistant.

That should be *adsense*, not adwords.  But yeah.

Jeff 

[Gregory D'alesandre]

Well it is the right place to rant in so far as we do depend on Apps for Domains and I can pass this feedback along internally to ensure they understand the external perception.

Thanks for the feedback, I'll make sure it gets to the right folks...

Greg

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[Rori Stumpf]

On Sep 19, 8:45 pm, Jeff Schnitzer <j...@infohazard.org> wrote:
> I'd like to give a huge +1 to this.  The Google Apps system is a trainwreck.
>  I made the terrible mistake of moving some of my personal domains to Google
> Apps and now:

I completely agree. I love most things Google, but moving to Google
Apps has been less than a smart idea.

User authentication is a complete and utter nightmare. For the longest
time I could not use Google Groups with my apps user name... I know,
it does not make sense. I still don't understand what the heck is
going on with YouTube. I've just given up trying to understand the
logic behind disallowing access to Google Apps users or how it even
works. Why can't we just login?

And Apps users are blocked from new Google features such as Google+...
not a good way to introduce new products to the people who were
confident enough to buy into Google Apps.

Just make it work :-)

[Brandon Wirtz]

Greg, if you are passing things along, mention I’m still not resolved, and I started on the 8^th of this month.

[Joshua Smith]

Greg,

While you have them on the phone, please ask them to figure out why the viewer doesn't work with blobstore-served .docx files like this one:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A//www.mytowngovernment.org/download%3Fdocument%3Dag50b3duZ292ZXJubWVudHIVCxINRG9jdW1lbnRNb2RlbBiEh1EM

But it works if you download the .docx files and upload it back to the viewer:

http://www.mytowngovernment.org/download?document=ag50b3duZ292ZXJubWVudHIVCxINRG9jdW1lbnRNb2RlbBiEh1EM

[Stuart Langley]

Joshua,

If you have not already, can you file an issue in the tracker for viewer not working with .docx files served from blobstore?

Thanks,

Stuart

[vlad]

The right question to ask Greg is why did you tie GAE into GApps at all? My perception is that vast majority of GAE developers do not need and will never use GApps. Domain management is minor feature which you could have put on a Admin Console page. I always thought that coupling GAE to GApps was a very microsoft'y styled move. Bill is smiling on you guys.

[Ross Karchner]

It's been WontFix'ed for a while, but I have a ticket for plain old CNAME support: http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=2649

[Chris Copeland]

It's been WontFix'ed for a while, but I have a ticket for plain old CNAME support: http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=2649

There's another issue in the same vein that's still open:
http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=2587
Interestingly they both have 29 stars.

 

[Joshua Smith]

Done: Issue 5956

This is really a google apps issue, not a GAE issue, which is why I didn't put it in the tracker before.  Is there a google apps issue tracker?  I couldn't find one.

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[Stuart Langley]

I'll point it at the right people.

Thanks.

[Joshua Smith]

In case any of you were following along, the google docs team found a workaround for the viewer not liking .docx files:

Begin forwarded message:

From: googlea...@googlecode.com

Subject: Re: Issue 5956 in googleappengine: Google Apps Viewer will not show .docx files served from blobstore

Date: September 23, 2011 7:04:12 PM EDT

To: Joshua...@charter.net

Reply-To: codesite...@google.com

Comment #3 on issue 5956 by slang...@google.com: Google Apps Viewer will not show .docx files served from blobstore
http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=5956

Viewer team has found the root cause and will work on a fix.

In the meantime they have provided advice on a workaround.

"Append the filetype extension as an escaped query param in their download url that they pass to us. E.g., %26.docx for docx"

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On Sep 22, 2011, at 5:41 PM, Stuart Langley wrote:

I'll point it at the right people.

Thanks.

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