Google reminds users to "Call Dad", makes users angry

My father recently died and while things like these may trigger some slight pain, that's just life. You have to get the fuck over it.<p>It's never worth accommodating the easily offended, especially on the Internet.

I was just talking with my mom about this this morning. My father passed away about a year and a half ago. I still very much miss him.<p>I really hate to be That Guy that complains about the little things that are supposed to brighten our day. Particularly because I work for Google and have at various other times been the guy implementing these little things that then get complained about. I wouldn't want to see Google never do these things, because there will always be some minority of the user base that will be offended, and that's just life. Otherwise we get a boring faceless corporation, and that would be a shame.<p>But when I saw this, my reaction was very much the same as the posters on the support forum. It hurt. Because I totally would call him, if I could. But I can't. And that really, really sucks.

When you operate on the scale of Google or Facebook, getting "cute" will inevitably end up with some angry users. But without little touches like this, the company would move closer and closer to the IBM-esque corporate monolith. And neither the users nor Google want to see that image.<p>That said, maybe this one was pushing it. I saw that this morning and thought, "Oh, here we go..."

"Call your dad on fathers day" as politically incorrect? This seems like overkill. There is a 1000 other vastly more important things to get worked up over. Its not like Google took your dad away or made him someone you despise, and then flaunts how great it is having a dad you'd want to honor on fathers days in front of you. It's a little something to give their service a slight personality. Perhaps its like Field of Dreams, give people somewhere to complain, they will complain, which is fine, but complain about the problem, the people that caused it, not the things that remind you of it, which end up getting those things taken away from the majority of people that would enjoy the rather innocent reminder.I could see being pissed off if you were in jail for a crime you didn't commit, and you were being forced to celebrate the 4th of July or something, but this is not even close to that.

There are a few sides to this one:<p>On the practical, implementation detail side of this, users should have been allowed to remove the item. I'm sure the reason that didn't happen is simply because of the way it was implemented, and implementing the item as something that was actually per-user would simply have pushed into the 'not happening' zone.<p>As regards, morals, sensibilities and where the hell 'right' is on the larger picture the answer is 'who knows?' - Personally, I think the fact that a slight prompting would have resulted in millions of tiny acts of goodness, and a few larger ones of users being upset, but there's no particular metric one can apply there. My intuition says the balance falls largely on the side of it being a net postitive for their users at large, and their families too.<p>As far as those offended go, I'm sort of reminded of the parallels with doctors and malpractice suits - hundreds of lives saved, helped, made more comfortable, and it' can take one slip-up to undo all of it. No, it's not a 'gtfover it', but it's not so much the message appearing as the inability to control it that led to a small slight being taken as an offense. Anger is almost always fear, and fear almost always a simple desire to not be hurt, and the inability to stop it continuing to prompt them - that likely just resonated with the aspects of whatever hurt in the first place, whether it was mortality, abuse or anything else.<p>No one meant any offense, and there was a person, and then people who thought they'd do something they thought would be good, and might make a few people happier (and possibly serve their employer's larger aims too).<p>They didn't do a bad thing. They did a good thing, badly.

I'm not sure how I feel about this (although I don't use Gmail, so thankfully, it doesn't matter how I feel).<p>I like the fact that Google adds little touches that try to remind you that their employees are actual human beings.<p>I can be sympathetic to people who this might make uncomfortable (Father's Day is a pretty bad day for me), but I'm not sure how reasonable it is to try and shield yourself from things like this. I mean, presumably, you don't break down into tears every time a commercial airs advertising a "Father's Day" sale?<p>It just seems like a futile endeavor. It would be like if the color Yellow reminded you of some terrible memory. You'd kind of just have to deal with it.

I think it is a good lesson to small companies in that you shouldn't add things to what people consider "mine" or expect the normal family situation applies to everyone. The doodle is ok, but adding reminders crosses the line. Some of the forum postings are just sad and to think some managers decision added one more bit of pain is not something you want.

You know, as soon as I saw that, even though my dad is perfectly healthy and I hadn't called him yet today, I was a little creeped out. I couldn't put my finger on why.<p>The doodles are one thing, but Gmail is supposed to be a tool, and I think people expect different things from that.

Many commenters seem not to notice that this upsets not only those whose fathers have recently passed, but even more those whose fathers have left them or abused them.

I found it a bit creepy simply because I view the Google services as pure utility completely segregated from my real life. I use them in the same way I use my microwave or toaster. If I woke up this morning and my microwave said "call Dad" I would have the same reaction. It's not a big deal of course but it's just kind of weird. It shows what a huge challenge Google has to ever develop a coherent social strategy when such a harmless message causes a little controversy.

I think a big part of the issue is that a person's Gmail is treated as something much more personal than a TV ad or anything else. I think this is the piece that people blasting complaints as "too sensitive" are missing.<p>To have a unremovable "personal" message there as part of the interface feels weird to start with, but it feels even more like a violation if it's offensive (as with this case).

In other news, users love to bitch about everything.

Google just doesn't get social media — this is the type of stuff that Facebook was doing wrong over two years ago and quickly fixed. Instead of trying to imitate Facebook they should re-focus on fixing services they already have like Blogger. It's mind blowing to think that Blogger is now in the slow lane behind the likes of Tumblr and WordPress. Google is starting to remind me of Yahoo! in a bad way — a place where good products go to die. My advice for them would be to buy Twitter, but they'd only mess that up over time...

People that get angry about things like this should really just chill. Google's probably created much more happiness than sorrow with this feature, by reminding kids to call their dads.

If Google say "Call Dad" to users who don't have a dad, it's a bug. Bugs are bad. Google should fix it.

Google reminds about Father's Day, yet it failed to remind me about a birthday over both SMS and email.

A technical question, if I might:<p>Anyone in here that knows how these reminders where targeted? I didn't check GMail yesterday, so I've no clue if they would've been shown to me. And frankly, it would've been the wrong date.<p>Looking at the mess that is [1], was this rolled out to US people only? Using geoip or information from user profiles? Because I cannot imagine that a global reminder would've made much sense, ignoring the current discussion if it was a bad thing in general.<p>1: <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Father%27s_Day#International_history_and_traditions" rel="nofollow">https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Father%27s_Da...</a>

Imagine Batman login to his gmail account and then seeing this reminder…

Google surely must have anticipated that some people would react this way. Good on them for going ahead with this reminder anyway.

Wait, are we still in America where every surface in the virtual and real world is covered with ads? In general I have a problem with the ad supported universe, it turns the creative expression into a commodity to sell shoes and lipstick.<p>I wish I can could my dad about this.

people get angry over the smallest things these days

I honestly thought it was a cool new feature of gMail where I can get reminders about calling people that is tied into gCal.

I lost my faith in people reading his.

All these geniuses at Google and nobody realised it was a dumb idea? They haven't all gone to Facebook. Marissa Mayer needs a tighter grip on the still, only just, minimalist homepage. I'd prefer no doodles at all, but I demand no power hogging js doodles!

sometimes when watching hulu or youtube i see ads that i find offensive. it's not the same situation, but i do wonder where to draw the lines mentioned in the discussions here.

It is true that this may hit feelings of some people. If we are blaming them, lets also blame Apple(app store) and a lot others. Unfortunately we have to learn to adapt and let go of these things... Internet is quite insensitive

You know what Google could have done?<p>They could have shown a message that said "It's Father's Day! Do you want to add a to-do to call your dad or someone you love?" And then you could click "No" or "Yes."<p>Then it would have been a case of PERMISSION, rather than INVASION.<p>Emotions matter. With a damaged emotional center in your brain, you cannot make decisions as simple as "which shoes should I put on" -- and thus became utterly paralyzed. To deny that emotions matter is not only inhumane, but extremely illogical in light of all the research that proves otherwise.<p>And a sense of control is one of the most important feelings in the world. Research has shown that removal of the feeling of control actually causes elderly &#38; sick people to DIE much, much faster and more often. Even in things as significant as being the own caretaker of the plants in their room, or choosing the date &#38; time a student volunteer visits them. And if you give the nursing patients control, and then take it away, they die at a higher rate even than those who never had control to begin with.<p>Over &#38; over, studies have shown that emotions have great primacy in human life (and power over the so-called logic!).<p>Google runs roughshod over emotions constantly, and the one of control most egregiously. This is just yet another example. All they had to do was to make it a CHOICE -- and expand "dad" to "someone you love," and they could have avoided hurting people and all this negative PR.<p>Another aspect of emotions is that people treat everything -- software, computers, animals, other inanimate objects -- as if they have personalities &#38; are alive. That's what we're wired to do: to interact with beings. And so people will hold grudges against faceless companies and even tools.<p>And yes, it is wrong, if you think that hurting people unnecessarily by being an antisocial oaf is wrong -- when you could, by investing just a little bit of effort, and by respecting SCIENCE, do a vastly superior job.

I am sure that the rainbow that show ups when you search "gay marriage" on google is going to upset some people... guess they need a new option to please those people ("Dont show me the gay rainbow").

I'm so tired of sensitive people complaining about everything. We all have our problems, being reminded to "call dad" is not a reason to act like Google showed up to your house and kicked your dog.