I have been a long-time Google user. For example, I’m probably the only person in the world who signed up for Blogger in 2001 who is still using it as their primary blogging platform.
When Gmail came out, I lobbied for early access so I could make sure I got my name (thanks Hunter!).
PBworks uses Google Apps for email and calendaring, and in general, it’s been a good service.
So imagine my horror when I discovered this morning that I could no longer use my Gmail account and my Google Apps account in the same browser window.
This poses a major problem, because it means I can’t access my calendar (tied to Google Apps) and Google Reader (tied to Gmail) in the same browser window. I face a similar choice with email and Blogger.
Fortunately for me, I’m a dinosaur who still uses POP3 and Outlook as my primary email client. But I’m still going to have to split my Google world into two browsers to make things work. I’ll be using my Gmail account in Firefox so that I can still access Blogger and Google Reader, and I’m using my Google Apps account in Chrome so I can access my calendar and webmail.
And while I’m a technical dolt, the very smart people around me are facing the same issues, so it’s not just my imagination.
I’m grateful to Google for all it’s given me over the years, but I really hope that the good folks there are able to figure out a fix for this craziness soon.
What are you doing to deal with the new Google Account rules?
(Cross-posted @ Adventures in Capitalism)
Chris,
I believe you can still turn on multi-account login, but it is not a pleasant process, full of glitches. The roots all go back to the Google Account Chaos I wrote about repeatedly and which, years later was supposedly fixed with the Google Apps transition to “Full Accounts”. Except that the transition proccess was another failure and these accounts are anything but “full”. The current bruhaha around Google+, the inability to use it, lack of Profiles for Apps accounts .. etc perhaps pushes this problem into the limelight so that we’ll have a solution.
Although…I must admit I have doubts.
I’ve been long taking notes for a angry post, and the only reason I have not published it yet is that it takes too much energy and is a moving target… since every time I look at it something’s changed.
Chris, the multi-account login worked for me, too, but it seems unstable and buggy.
Write that post, please.
Hey all,
I have been using multiple account login now for a while and it works really well for me.
See here
http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=181599
for how to turn it on.
Its fair to say I am a power user and have up to 7 accounts open in separate tabs at the same time, and in the last few months i haven’t had any problems to speak of. (It was glitchy at first but now I am a fan)
Zoli – what problems are you finding with the “full” account? I agree around profiles, and its a problem that would be great if they fixed it sooner rather than later, but i am also very aware that Apps being an enterprise tool they are wanting to make sure they get it right.
Dave,
Too many to list here – I really do have to pull that post together. But other than functional failures in the transition process, let’s hone in on Apps being an Enterprise (or business, including SMB) tool – because that’s really what it is. The only problem is, there are a few million “orphan” users: individuals who don’t need enterprise admin, security..etc, but who want to continue to use their own domain – i.e. the original GAFYD concept. It appears Google wants them to use .gmail.com, which is a step back. But I don’t want to open Pandora’s box here… saving some for the post. 🙂
Making accounts work well is hard.
It’s especially hard when there are tons of applications running off different code bases.
But it sure seems like Google is making it harder than it needs to be.
All most of us want to do is to be able to log into a bunch of different apps.
I suspect that much of the complexity comes from things Google wants to do for itself, not for the user experience.
I ran a while back into the same problem. The multiple accounts options works, sort of, because you will go crazy on switching between them a 1000 times a day.
I instead migrated everything to my Google Apps account (http://blog.aadjemonkeyrock.com/2010/11/using-my-google-apps-account-as-full.html) and that worked fine, until Google + arrived.
Now I’m again F$*ked by Google, because there don’t let me in. I’m now supposed to be a business and they aren’t allowed for some silly reason. In a few months, well I’ve heard that before. Google now broke my internet: http://blog.aadjemonkeyrock.com/2011/07/google-you-have-broken-internet.html
Another way to get around some issues with multiple Google accounts is to log in through a browser that supports something like the incognito function in Google Chrome. Set up a Google Chrome incognito window and then you can log in separately to another Google account and you can be logged in to both. No need to launch the second browser.