At one time, I played with putting Google AdSense on my company site. I found out quickly that it often wasn't a straightforward process to get things enabled under Google, but hey, they were new, and one can be forgiven for clunkyness in start-up services.
Now Google is the giant, not the new kid on the block. Yet their customer interfaces and procedures barely appear to have been changed. One apparent process design principle that has been a hallmark of their account management is that the user cannot back-out of a failed process, or a set-up that went awry, without waiting for human approvals.
Once you've started using a name or email on a Google service, it is as if it is a barbed hook: you cannot pull it out. Cancel buttons are missing. Roll-up and Confirmation screens are missing. "Terminate My Account" is no where to be found. Apparently once you've used an identity in Google services, Google is committed to it forever even if the process hasn't created any auditable transactions. I was going to set up AdSense for this blog, only to find out that the experimentation I did years ago under a now-defunct email, is still out there under my name, and according to Google policy only one account is allowed per person. At the same time, I also have a Google account unrelated to the AdSense junk. So I can try to link up the accounts or sign-up for a prohibited new account under servicethatsucks@gmail.com, but the whole point is this: the whole process is a mystery and Google's policy of "no undo" when initially setting up is service that sucks.
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I finally found not one account termination option, but two. Confusion abounds: which path do I take? Well, given the difficulty in undoing actions in Google's applications, I was reluctant to try either. Turns out one allows you to kill your entire suite of accounts under Google, never to return. Does it allow you to sign up again under the same name? It is unclear, but seems to suggest not. Another option allows you to dump a GMail account, but suggests your email name will be lost forever, and you cannot get it back. Forum postings suggest otherwise. So that seems to be the only way to change the name Google has for me back to my real email: dump GMail. Well, anyway I'll do that and set up a better initial name under GMail.
I categorize this under the general topic of "automagical" behavior. Google put in a fixed bit of logic that is anything but logical.
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