>Well, yeah, there does have to be a public mailing list.
Imo, this is not scalable or sustainable, and mailing lists are not a replacement for adequate customer support.
The only reason sending emails directly to mailing lists for specific Google products works is precisely because those mailing lists are not public and not flooded with bajillions of emails from the general public. So those who send the emails are already somewhat pre-screened in a way, because if you know that mailing list email address in the first place, you are very unlikely to send something like "my cousin couldn't remember password to their google photos account, can you fix this please". That's why everything there ends up being read and addressed. If those mailing lists were public, then they would be just as useless and ineffective as the current customer support routes currently are for Google.
Tl;dr: mailing lists for specific products are a nifty workaround for the time being, but they aren't a good sustainable solution for shitty customer support. Making those mailing lists public will not only not help solving the problem, it will just make those mailing lists as ineffective as the current customer support. There is no "one weird trick" to solve the customer support adequacy issues with Google,it has to be an actual customer solution that won't be easy and will take time.
Imo, this is not scalable or sustainable, and mailing lists are not a replacement for adequate customer support.
The only reason sending emails directly to mailing lists for specific Google products works is precisely because those mailing lists are not public and not flooded with bajillions of emails from the general public. So those who send the emails are already somewhat pre-screened in a way, because if you know that mailing list email address in the first place, you are very unlikely to send something like "my cousin couldn't remember password to their google photos account, can you fix this please". That's why everything there ends up being read and addressed. If those mailing lists were public, then they would be just as useless and ineffective as the current customer support routes currently are for Google.
Tl;dr: mailing lists for specific products are a nifty workaround for the time being, but they aren't a good sustainable solution for shitty customer support. Making those mailing lists public will not only not help solving the problem, it will just make those mailing lists as ineffective as the current customer support. There is no "one weird trick" to solve the customer support adequacy issues with Google,it has to be an actual customer solution that won't be easy and will take time.