Google isn't just a communication system, though. They're a very large corporation involved in numerous enterprises that often interfere with one another, and their actions are further modified by an even larger legal system that only imperfectly represents the collective will of its constituents.
Decisions are often (indeed, perhaps mostly) made without any consideration of individual people (even the people making the decisions aren't always entirely conscious of what they're doing). I don't believe that's a necessity, but a lot of people are pretty comfortable with it and it mostly approximates working. This sort of thing shouldn't come as a terrible surprise.
> Google isn't just a communication system, though.
Gmail is. It's not positioned with anything like the complexity you describe. So it's not unreasonable, as OP suggested it was, for a user to want to use it, without giving much thought to age.
> It's not positioned with anything like the complexity you describe.
I'm afraid that this is, at least to the best of my ability to judge, simply wrong. Gmail is affected by the rules of operation at Google, and by the law. They certainly could address the issue with more compassion, but only at the cost of further increasing the complexity of their system. Everything is a trade-off.
> So it's not unreasonable, as OP suggested it was, for a user to want to use it, without giving much thought to age.
I didn't say it was "unreasonable." Just that the system isn't set up to allow it. It could be, but it currently isn't.
Oh, I meant marketing positioning. That is, Google doesn't tell users holy crap this is a byzantine system of laws and mousetraps and shit!
They just say Gmail is neat, and it's free, so use it.
But, of course you're right, the creation of the sausage that is Gmail is a very complicated sequence, beset by both internal and external bureaucracy, to say nothing of the technical challenges in maintaining it.
Certainly. I would never accuse Google of consistency in presentation. Consistency is usually very far down the list of things-that-matter when it comes to business; I suspect they're much more motivated by convincing people to use their products.
If they weren't, we would all be complaining about some other company running one of the world's most popular email services instead.
Decisions are often (indeed, perhaps mostly) made without any consideration of individual people (even the people making the decisions aren't always entirely conscious of what they're doing). I don't believe that's a necessity, but a lot of people are pretty comfortable with it and it mostly approximates working. This sort of thing shouldn't come as a terrible surprise.