Oh you sweet summer child, Google gives the cold shoulder to everyone, including paying customers.

Including governments (except maybe US gov? But even that is not sure).

I’ve always wondered if litigation avenues would be a viable approach, if not dangerous

If you don't mind having your account immediately terminated and blacklisted, then maybe

You are suggesting that google would immediately terminate and blacklist an account that is the subject of litigation?

for google you are just a paying product

See, I've been wondering about this. I would have thought paying gives you a better chance of contacting, unlike Meta Verified which is useless. Is that not the case?

I've been an App Engine user for 15 years. Last year I needed some help and I had to pay some small amount for support and get an engineer to actually look at my account and tell me how to do something.

I don't remember how much it was, not much. I subscribed to the support for one month, then canceled. I've paid them hundreds a month for years, so it feels kind of cheap of them, but I did manage to get the help I needed.

It really depends. Sales people will bend over backwards and will escalate things internally, but once they realize you “need” them (eg: for ads or due to lockin) they stop caring.

Used to work in marketing-adjacent teams and know this too well.

Paying for Google One gives you human support (or at least it did...) I'd imagine that being a paying customer also gives you various rights per local laws

Google One employees the stupidest human beings on the face of Earth. Two of the morons there tried convincing me that a backup of 10+ years of message history fit in < 2MB, rather than their backup being totally broken. They also lack object permanence and literally don't read messages.

If your goal is tech support, at least if you just light the money on fire you'll get warm.