I couldn’t get support at Google — So I started digging in their files.

There is no contact for Google. So I tracked down what the Googlers are up to and started swimming in their datasets.

This photo is an Easter Egg on its own with a double meaning.

I have an issue with my Gmail account. Every year I scrub the account, get a new one. I delete all emails and set an auto-forwarder that sends all new emails to the next email created.

This means any new emails that come in go to the old account.
In a few years time (after ensuring nothing important has arrived) I delete the Google account.

Except one day I made a mistake. My password manager didn’t correctly save the password for the email. And so I lost login access to the old account. I still get new emails, sure. But I can’t log in and reply- I have to reply from my new email — this exposing my new email to companies/folks I might not wish to have it.

The logging process of Google seems to have a permanent lockout if you’ve tried multiple times to login. Which I have — unknowingly perma-locking myself from the account forevermore.

so now I can’t delete it. I’m stuck receiving emails.
Which wouldn’t be so bad if the account hadn’t been caught in a data breach. Now it’s seen as a security risk- one I’m helpless to purge.

the google support document https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7682439

is pretty useless as well. It doesn’t matter that I answer the questions correctly, because I’ve tried in the past I get a “can’t sign you in” message. I have also figured out what the old passwords used to be.

You can’t recover your account at this time because Google doesn’t have enough info to be sure this account is yours.

so now I had a clear target in mind: Google — or anyone working on the Gmail team who could help escalate the case. After all, I’ve broken into Apple, so how hard could this be?

I opened google.com and searched for “Noogler” a known term Google calls its new employees.

About 129,000 results

This was going to be a long night.

If I have to read one more “how to get hired!” article from someone who doesn’t have a clue.. I muttered.

*cough* *cough* BS..

Alt Text: Image shows video titled “How To Get A Job At Google” with the search term saying “attend a prestigious school”

The sun was rising and I’d been up all night, peering into one mind-numbing blog after the next. I’d opened a LibreCalc sheet and anytime I ran across something from Google — or someone who claimed to have worked on something, I’d note down the URL, term that led to it, and my notes on the findings. Just a giant sheet of searching gibberish, and hours upon hours of looking for Googlers.

At first I wasn’t finding anything. Just support pages on Google, and lots of discussions closed when someone posed a similar problem with no help. but little by little focusing on the details of Gmail release, or finding people who were selling Gmail invites online (back in the days when it was invite only) my list of connections grew.

And then I hit pay dirt.

One day some time ago the Google search bar turned black. It refused to be removed and was a push for people to use Google+ it turns out that the week of that release was a very controversial day at Google.

Google+ or should I say Emerald Sea, was a copy, with some theming — of the tool that was used within Google for talking across teams.

And you can see this yourself by visiting any google+ link

It turns out Google didn’t really delete Google+
It still exists, buried under a filter that returns you to a page explaining Google+ was shut down. Perhaps Google is biding their time, and will one day launch a social network again.

I hope not.

But it’s there, buried under the code of a Google+ page
hidden inside the source code of a forgotten help article
https://support.google.com/answer/2451065
A secret placed by a Googler

After that, it wasn’t hard.
I quickly fell into the routine of finding — identifying, and marking each row for further analysis. Now I wasn’t really hunting for Googlers, more secrets left behind by development teams. What new Easter eggs lay hiding inside the product pages, masked by internal terms?

Postermaster Tools, Fuchsia, oxygen, I couldn’t get enough., From a blog on development to a document on an unreleased system to an old webpage on “input tools”

I was in nerd heaven.

Cost-Efficient Dragonfly Topology for Large-Scale Systems

gave me a mind-bending essay on ..well.. Large scale systems. Other documents described the architecture of YouTube. The anti-fraud systems. The Monetization and targeted advertising data skews.

The Access Approval API for controlling access to data by Google Personnel O.o

This looks fun!

Datasets on COVID-19 by country

This is what you call “Big Data”

And may more things I’d love to share, but there’s simply no easy way to write it without also revealing cracks in the systems Google uses.
As of now, I think I need a bigger hard drive. I’ve been downloading data as fast as I can, and something must have tripped inside Google because many of the links no longer work. Of course, I have no malicious intent, I’m just hyper curious about the secret projects being worked on.

I still need help with my Gmail issue- I’d like to be able to log in the account. If you work for Google, and you know someone on the Gmail team who can assist, feel free to reach out.

Until then, I’ll just be digging through Google’s files.