If google wants me to use and depend on their services they need to take google apps for domains seriously. I have three google apps for domains accounts, and a regular gmail account.
One apps for domain account is tied to my job, another my personal domain, a third to a former job/personal domain that I registered services with. I used my gmail account to access services that google doesn't make available on google apps for domains.
It seems that no matter which google service I'm using, I'm logged into the wrong account. I frequently can't log out from the other account properly on the login page so I have to go back to a mail interface. It is an utter mess. I don't care about google connecting the dots and realizing that I'm the same person in all the places. They make it so frustratingly hard to use and depend on their services that I'm actively looking for alternatives.
Linkedin handles it fine, when someone tries to friend me on my professional email address with linkedin, they know that I'm the same person. Google+ doesn't. I don't have a Google+ account on my preferred email account because I can't figure out how to enable it for that domain. I get Google+ friend requests regularly on every email address I have.
I found this back in 2009, maybe 2010, when I was still "on the inside" and shared it around internally. Some people got a real kick out of it.
Now consider this: every single employee has a corp account, and I would think nearly every employee has a personal account, too. That means problems stemming from being in the right account have probably popped up in every single person's face for years now.
It didn't help when they changed from having the u@h up to just a name. Great. I know my name. I need to know which account I'm in.
> It seems that no matter which google service I'm using, I'm logged into the wrong account.
Can you give an example of a series of actions that leads to this? I'm logged into two separate Google accounts at pretty much all times, and I never run into trouble. I'm curious as to what the difference is between our two usage patterns.
I would have agreed with you several years ago - but Google has vastly improved this across their services over the last two years. There are still holes, but I now can switch accounts in a single drop-down on most Google sites I use.
I still have problems with Google Wallet (aka Checkout) and Analytics seems to have it's own multi-account sign-in system.
At least you have the Gmail address you want. My desired username is in a "reserved" state, or something, in that it's linked to my account under "other usernames", and I can log in with it, but I can't create a Gmail account for it.
This all started when I decided to try Lively, of all things. It prompted me for a username, but I never would have entered what I did if I knew that that username would become the permanent name of my Google account.
I don't think there's many Google services any more where you can't use your apps for domains account. I stopped using my @gmail account years ago - in fact, I gave it to my father - and I can't remember having a problem using my Apps account. (Maybe with Google+ when it first came out?)
The split between a personal Google Apps account and a plain old GMail account was the worst for me. Anyone who lived through the era where Google Apps accounts weren't full-fledged Google accounts is in the same boat. The way I solved the problem is by not using my personal Google Apps account anymore. I forward the email to a GMail account and use that for all Google services. Google Now was the main reason I made the switch. It only supports one account, and it was easier to move my email and calendar that it would've been to move Voice and everything else.
It's kind of a major design flaw.. I'm getting pretty sick of having to educate everyone on which email address is associated with my... "main" Google+ account.
It'll only partly solve your problem, but you can have one profile current in incognito and another current in your normal window. This is what I do when someone wants to quickly check their fb/gmail while I'm logged in.
As I see Google expand it's service offerings I find myself excited with the potential yet refraining from using any of these services for a very good reason:
As an entrepreneur you are always up against the very real probability of Google shutting down your account due to unknown violations. This topic has been discussed on HN before. I have seen it and experienced it first hand with clients. You account is auto-magically tagged and permanently suspended and you are screwed. Say goodbye to your docs, email, storage, adwords, adsense, plus and now logins.
I would really like to hear from someone at Google on the reasons why your company will not come out and offer:
(a) A solid guarantee of non-termination of services
(b) Real customer service
(c) A sensible mechanism through which honest users of your services can deal with TOS violations (and learn how to fix problems) without risking loosing it all.
There's more, but I'm busy. The point is that Google offers a lot of neat stuff but the risk is too great. It's like jumping off a plane with a parachute while someone retains control of a "deploy disable" mechanism. You don't know if you are going to crater yourself on the fifth, the hundredth or the nth jump. You just know that it could happen and you will never know why.
> A solid guarantee of non-termination of services
If they terminate your account, it's because they had a reasonable suspicion that the account violated their TOS. So I guess this one is actually related to not knowing what the violation was, and accordingly assuming it was for no good reason. I didn't work on the Policy team - I was a dev - but I seriously doubt anyone there could terminate peoples' accounts without reasonable suspicion of a violation and get away with it. The checks and balances are too tight.
> Real customer service
Google does have "real customer service". However, as far as I know, it's reserved for the people who are paying Google money for whatever reason. In general, any of Google's free services have so many tens of millions of users that it would be ludicrous to guarantee any level of service for every single one of them.
As to the general complaint about the very real possibility of being cut off from your data, that's a risk wherever you go. Drives fail, servers get hacked, someone accidentally hits "delete everything" instead of "refresh monitoring dashboard"... etc. At least with Google Take-Out, they make it incredibly easy to download whatever data you have on there periodically for the purpose of doing backups.
Yes this is a serious problem. I do have a lot of my data tied up in google accounts but I still fear the sudden, unexplained ban-hammer coming down on me with no way to contact an actual human to ask questions off of (see this as a hilarious example of google's support for paying customers: https://plus.google.com/114419328456762929144/posts/NAJbzrZw... )
Smart: with people starting to become aware of just how much access Facebook apps get to your social network, and already well aware of how much apps spam that network, offer apps that put the user in control of that: https://lh3.ggpht.com/-6MCVkHL9Rbs/USvqcyXRUCI/AAAAAAAABGI/o...
If all you want is a simple, privacy friendly login then check out Mozillas persona: https://login.persona.org/
Chances are your users won't have it already, but it's the only single sign-on solution I would use without calculating how much privacy I'm willing to "sell" for not having to register yet another time and remember yet another password.
Thanks! The Persona team is working hard to get past the "your users won't have it already" bit.
1. By the end of March, we'll turn on a Persona <-> Yahoo (OpenID) bridge, followed by one for Google (OpenID) and Hotmail (OAuth). Net win: A billion+ users can fully complete a first-time login with Persona using just three clicks. (Try it today! Use a Yahoo address at http://beta.123done.org/)
2. A subset of the team is working on a Persona-backed replacement for Firefox Sync. Net win: tens or hundreds of millions of additional users added to the "Persona-ready" camp.
3. The upcoming FirefoxOS phones all have Persona baked into the default Marketplace. Net win: time will only tell.
The above projects just streamline the initial onboarding experience: anyone can use Persona right now with any email address. FWIW, last time I checked, Persona's is averaging > 13,000 daily login transactions over a rolling 7-day window.
I don't want to derail, but if you have questions or need help getting Persona set up on your site, please free to email me.
Second that. Mozilla persona is fully distributed and not owned by a single entity. Moreover, it sounds like great engineering: do just one thing and do it well.
I hope it becomes the universal single sign on of the Web.
I've never used my GMail account, because bsimpson is a common name and I get all kinds of spam/wrong addresses there. I have Google Apps set up on domains I control for business and personal projects. G+, like GMusic, Wave, and all the other cool Google goodies, launched for GMail only. So, I made a G+ for my GMail address.
Then, I heard about Data Portability and the ability to migrate G+ accounts. "Finally, someone at Google understands that people have multiple accounts!" I ran their app, had my account frozen for a week for the 'migration', and created a new G+ for my personal domain. Bizarrely, they didn't delete my old G+ account.
I used to have a G+ account tied to the wrong e-mail address. Then, I tried Google's roundabout solution. Now, I have two G+ accounts. =\
The support for that isn't in G+, it's in Gmail. Gmail supports sending and receiving mail from multiple addresses. The other addresses don't even necessarily have to be Gmail accounts. It's easy to link all your email accounts together into one Gmail inbox.
Hmm, looks like the blog post went up before the partners rolled out to their public-facing sites. None of the partners I spot checked have G+ login yet.
Yeah ... speaking of "social spam" does anyone else get a "make new friends on Google+" page about 10% of the times you try to go to plus.google.com ? The persistent annoyance of that page was a major reason I went back to Facebook from G+, and now just use it as a Skype replacement.
What's hilarious about it? Getting random invites to games and other events because of broken or non-obvious filters is a huge problem on other social networking sites. And Facebook groups have always been a second seat to just sharing with everyone. It actually gets me in trouble a lot since I like to post about tech stuff but have many friends who aren't familiar and don't care about that stuff.
Doesn't the combination of Google+ Sign-In and Google Wallet remind you of Microsoft Passport[1]? I wonder if people who had concerns over a decade ago, will have the same concerns now.
Persona uses cryptographic tokens so that identity providers can't spy on what sites you're using, and can't selectively deny service to various sites.
I think that people should resolutely refuse to use any identity service that doesn't have at least those properties.
To ecaron and others asking -- we're doing a gradual rollout over the course of the day, as are our launch partners. You'll see the feature in their apps soon.
Terrible idea. I hate the (mis) connected nature of google services. E.g. I don't want to see Google+ contact's recommendations on my youtube page. Now I can't imagine the same happening with even other apps.
I don't want to use Google+ because everyone I care about uses Facebook, and even that I'm growing tired of and use less than I did for a few years.
I'll continue to use my Google (Gmail) account for authentication to StackExchange and a few other sites, because it doesn't make me use anything but Gmail. But, if Google starts forcing me to use Google+ actively, I'm going to stop using it for authentication.
I have no interest in building a new code path to support Google login, when I can use the OAuth setup I'm already using for 3 providers (inc. Google). It would be nice if you'd just post the CSS or PNGs you're branding as Google Login and let me use the backend I've already plumbed.
I found the actual button design guidelines, and noticed that their launch partners (FitBit and The Fancy) have designed their own buttons in the same style as Google's JS buttons.
In addition: Google+ doesn’t let apps spray “frictionless” updates all over the stream, so app activity will only appear when it’s relevant (like when you’re actually looking for it).
[+] [-] paddy_m|13 years ago|reply
One apps for domain account is tied to my job, another my personal domain, a third to a former job/personal domain that I registered services with. I used my gmail account to access services that google doesn't make available on google apps for domains.
It seems that no matter which google service I'm using, I'm logged into the wrong account. I frequently can't log out from the other account properly on the login page so I have to go back to a mail interface. It is an utter mess. I don't care about google connecting the dots and realizing that I'm the same person in all the places. They make it so frustratingly hard to use and depend on their services that I'm actively looking for alternatives.
Linkedin handles it fine, when someone tries to friend me on my professional email address with linkedin, they know that I'm the same person. Google+ doesn't. I don't have a Google+ account on my preferred email account because I can't figure out how to enable it for that domain. I get Google+ friend requests regularly on every email address I have.
[+] [-] rachelbythebay|13 years ago|reply
I found this back in 2009, maybe 2010, when I was still "on the inside" and shared it around internally. Some people got a real kick out of it.
Now consider this: every single employee has a corp account, and I would think nearly every employee has a personal account, too. That means problems stemming from being in the right account have probably popped up in every single person's face for years now.
It didn't help when they changed from having the u@h up to just a name. Great. I know my name. I need to know which account I'm in.
Sorry.
[+] [-] raldi|13 years ago|reply
Can you give an example of a series of actions that leads to this? I'm logged into two separate Google accounts at pretty much all times, and I never run into trouble. I'm curious as to what the difference is between our two usage patterns.
[+] [-] mckoss|13 years ago|reply
I still have problems with Google Wallet (aka Checkout) and Analytics seems to have it's own multi-account sign-in system.
[+] [-] xnxn|13 years ago|reply
This all started when I decided to try Lively, of all things. It prompted me for a username, but I never would have entered what I did if I knew that that username would become the permanent name of my Google account.
[+] [-] tomkarlo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] natrius|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] scottbartell|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkingston|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] esrauch|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robomartin|13 years ago|reply
As an entrepreneur you are always up against the very real probability of Google shutting down your account due to unknown violations. This topic has been discussed on HN before. I have seen it and experienced it first hand with clients. You account is auto-magically tagged and permanently suspended and you are screwed. Say goodbye to your docs, email, storage, adwords, adsense, plus and now logins.
I would really like to hear from someone at Google on the reasons why your company will not come out and offer:
(a) A solid guarantee of non-termination of services
(b) Real customer service
(c) A sensible mechanism through which honest users of your services can deal with TOS violations (and learn how to fix problems) without risking loosing it all.
There's more, but I'm busy. The point is that Google offers a lot of neat stuff but the risk is too great. It's like jumping off a plane with a parachute while someone retains control of a "deploy disable" mechanism. You don't know if you are going to crater yourself on the fifth, the hundredth or the nth jump. You just know that it could happen and you will never know why.
[+] [-] weareconvo|13 years ago|reply
If they terminate your account, it's because they had a reasonable suspicion that the account violated their TOS. So I guess this one is actually related to not knowing what the violation was, and accordingly assuming it was for no good reason. I didn't work on the Policy team - I was a dev - but I seriously doubt anyone there could terminate peoples' accounts without reasonable suspicion of a violation and get away with it. The checks and balances are too tight.
> Real customer service
Google does have "real customer service". However, as far as I know, it's reserved for the people who are paying Google money for whatever reason. In general, any of Google's free services have so many tens of millions of users that it would be ludicrous to guarantee any level of service for every single one of them.
As to the general complaint about the very real possibility of being cut off from your data, that's a risk wherever you go. Drives fail, servers get hacked, someone accidentally hits "delete everything" instead of "refresh monitoring dashboard"... etc. At least with Google Take-Out, they make it incredibly easy to download whatever data you have on there periodically for the purpose of doing backups.
[+] [-] chetanahuja|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] JoshTriplett|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masklinn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guelo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OlavHN|13 years ago|reply
Chances are your users won't have it already, but it's the only single sign-on solution I would use without calculating how much privacy I'm willing to "sell" for not having to register yet another time and remember yet another password.
[+] [-] callahad|13 years ago|reply
1. By the end of March, we'll turn on a Persona <-> Yahoo (OpenID) bridge, followed by one for Google (OpenID) and Hotmail (OAuth). Net win: A billion+ users can fully complete a first-time login with Persona using just three clicks. (Try it today! Use a Yahoo address at http://beta.123done.org/)
2. A subset of the team is working on a Persona-backed replacement for Firefox Sync. Net win: tens or hundreds of millions of additional users added to the "Persona-ready" camp.
3. The upcoming FirefoxOS phones all have Persona baked into the default Marketplace. Net win: time will only tell.
The above projects just streamline the initial onboarding experience: anyone can use Persona right now with any email address. FWIW, last time I checked, Persona's is averaging > 13,000 daily login transactions over a rolling 7-day window.
I don't want to derail, but if you have questions or need help getting Persona set up on your site, please free to email me.
[+] [-] sergiosgc|13 years ago|reply
I hope it becomes the universal single sign on of the Web.
[+] [-] wereHamster|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtrimpe|13 years ago|reply
It seems they're even offering analytics with it: https://developers.google.com/+/features/play-installs
[+] [-] avodonosov|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amalag|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jug6ernaut|13 years ago|reply
But until g+ allows linking of multiple gmail accounts to one g+ account i will never be using it.
Ever tried switching email address on g+, nightmare...
[+] [-] bsimpson|13 years ago|reply
Then, I heard about Data Portability and the ability to migrate G+ accounts. "Finally, someone at Google understands that people have multiple accounts!" I ran their app, had my account frozen for a week for the 'migration', and created a new G+ for my personal domain. Bizarrely, they didn't delete my old G+ account.
I used to have a G+ account tied to the wrong e-mail address. Then, I tried Google's roundabout solution. Now, I have two G+ accounts. =\
[+] [-] modeless|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ecaron|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sethjs|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] fyi80|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newishuser|13 years ago|reply
If they were serious about it, they'd put it in a non-changeable clause in their TOS. Otherwise it's just marketing fluff.
[+] [-] m_eiman|13 years ago|reply
Somehow I find that hilarious.
[+] [-] BruceIV|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dechols|13 years ago|reply
NOPE NOPE NOPE.
[+] [-] kmfrk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paranoiacblack|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitcartel|13 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_account#History
[+] [-] nullc|13 years ago|reply
Persona uses cryptographic tokens so that identity providers can't spy on what sites you're using, and can't selectively deny service to various sites.
I think that people should resolutely refuse to use any identity service that doesn't have at least those properties.
[+] [-] david_glazer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robot|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeevans|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hakaaaaak|13 years ago|reply
I'll continue to use my Google (Gmail) account for authentication to StackExchange and a few other sites, because it doesn't make me use anything but Gmail. But, if Google starts forcing me to use Google+ actively, I'm going to stop using it for authentication.
[+] [-] bsimpson|13 years ago|reply
https://developers.google.com/accounts/docs/OAuth2WebServer
According to these new docs, I need to use the Google+ JS to do client-side authentication, then pass the token to my server:
https://developers.google.com/+/web/signin/server-side-flow
I have no interest in building a new code path to support Google login, when I can use the OAuth setup I'm already using for 3 providers (inc. Google). It would be nice if you'd just post the CSS or PNGs you're branding as Google Login and let me use the backend I've already plumbed.
[+] [-] bsimpson|13 years ago|reply
Here are the design guidelines, PSDs, and PNGs:
https://developers.google.com/+/branding-guidelines
[+] [-] pgrote|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brown9-2|13 years ago|reply
In addition: Google+ doesn’t let apps spray “frictionless” updates all over the stream, so app activity will only appear when it’s relevant (like when you’re actually looking for it).
edit: referring specifically to how Facebook markets it's sharing options as "frictionless": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frictionless_sharing
[+] [-] Djehngo|13 years ago|reply