14 DAY TRIAL // Google is that kind of company that owns a huge number of services and solutions but its employees are aiming to develop new ideas and projects or even to update the existing products to make them even more powerful. Except for a limited number of programs including Google Desktop, Picasa or Firefox Toolbar, Google designed only online services that are accessible via an online interface located on the official page of every product. As you know, downloadable applications are often affected by viruses, Trojan files or spyware so it's obvious that owning web-based is safe and more secure.
Although many users might think that Google is one of the most secure companies on the internet, the latest reported vulnerabilities are contradicting this statement, multiple products designed by the search giant being more or less affected by security flaws.
For example, one of the most known bug identified in Google's solutions is represented by an error discovered in Gmail that deleted all the emails stored in the inbox folder for certain users. At that time, the company confirmed the problem but sustained its employees fixed the issue. Today, several users reported a new Gmail bug that removes all the saved contacts as well as the ids stored in the Gmail chat.
Because the number of the vulnerabilities identified in Google's products is continuously increasing, I decided to write this article and inform you about the best ways to inform the company about a potential flaw, vulnerability or bug.
I guess the best solution to fix a vulnerability identified in a Google service is to post the problem in a Google Groups topic because you can get answers from other users of the service or even directly from Google employees. If you think this solution is not proper for your need, you should try to contact the company using multiple forms available in the help menu posted on the official pages of every service. For example, in the help menu of the search engine it is mentioned:
"We think that's a bad thing, and so we request that, if your Google search returns a result that you suspect is spam, you please let us know by using this form. We thoroughly investigate every report of deceptive practices and take appropriate action when we uncover genuine abuse. In especially egregious cases, we will remove spammers from our index immediately, so they don't show up in search results at all. At a minimum we'll use the data from each spam report to improve our site ranking and filtering algorithms, which, over time, should increase the quality of our results."
As an alternative solution, you can try contacting the company by e-mail, but you should know that only a few addresses are available for individual users so don't expect to receive a detailed response from the employees. You can also try to find other contact information on the blog of the service concerning your problem.
The ultimate solution is to search Google for forums or communities to report the problem, or even inform SEO experts available on multiple websites of your flaw.