New Google Accounts Require Gmail and Google+

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2012/01/new-google-accounts-require-gmail-and.html

by lomegor • 15 years ago

127 107 15 years ago

googlesystem.blogspot.com

bengebre2• 15 years ago

The "Delete profile and Google+ features" link in the Google "Account Overview" has also been removed, so it looks like you can no longer get rid of your Google+ account after the fact as outlined here:

http://www.troublefixers.com/how-to-delete-google-plus-or-go...

pilif2• 15 years ago

I still see the link - it moved from the G+ setting to the Google Account settings.

bengebre2• 15 years ago

I see the title "Delete profile and Google+ features" but no link to an actual action when I visit here:

https://www.google.com/settings/general

My guess is it's going away for everyone, but I guess that's speculation.

natdog• 15 years ago

Of course you can get rid of your Google+ account, just put a fake name on there.

pilif2• 15 years ago

I'd say that by doing this they will gain more users to G+ than they will not gain for Gmail or other services due to concerns about G+.

On the other hand, being able to sign up with an arbitrary email address has always lead to issues once/if you switch to Google Apps and intend to share local parts.

Google has no obligation to provide G+/GMail-less accounts and I'm sure there is a lot of technical and business reasons for coupling them. As it's their service, that's what we get.

lomegor• 15 years ago

That's true, but I just feel that's not the Google's way of doing things. I mean, they never forced you to use their other products in the past, so this comes as a surprise to me.

Of course, it's their company they can do whatever they want. That doesn't mean we can't judge them.

stevengg• 15 years ago

Does this mean you can't make throwaway email addresses anymore not linked to your real name since google doesn't allow alias on G+ you always be at risk of deletion?

yanw5• 15 years ago

They started allowing aliases on G+.

jdp23• 15 years ago

You've said this several times, but it's not true. Google hasn't changed their policy; and they still ban some users for violating it.

tonfa2• 15 years ago

The real name suspension only affects the G+ profile (not gmail).

dexen• 15 years ago

It's somewhat troubling to me due to the `real name' requirement of Google+. Seems I can't create a semi-anonymous email at gmail anymore?

vladd• 15 years ago

There are implications for business accounts too: if you need a real name you'll no longer be able to sign up in Adwords with something like admin@<company-domain> (and changing the company's Adwords to another person becomes a headache).

yanw5• 15 years ago

For Google Apps G+ is an opt-in service.

joshuahedlund2• 15 years ago

I can see why Google would want to clamp down on semi-anonymous gmail accounts. I'm sure many of us have used them for convenient purposes with no ill intent, myself included, but we all know that they are often used for spamming. Overall I'm OK with this as long as they don't remove the lesser-known feature of creating infinite aliases with a plus sign (myemail@gmail.com -> mymail+whatever@gmail.com). It doesn't work everywhere, and it doesn't solve all of the needs for using semi-anonymous emails, but it often solves a lot of them.

Still, I won't be surprised if demand starts rising for other free anonymous mail services. Google's UI presents a nice barrier to entry, though (of course, others exist but none are as popular right now).

nolok2• 15 years ago

Use punctuation, it works pretty much everywhere

mymail@gmail.com my.mail@gmail.com m.y.m.a.i.l@gmail.com

These all redirect to the same mailbox on gmail

eternalban• 15 years ago

"What do you have to hide?" http://www.zerohedge.com/about

yanw5• 15 years ago

There is no more a "real name" requirement for G+.

nknight• 15 years ago

Please cite some evidence for this. I can't find any. The policies are still in place, and the last statement I can find from Google dates to October and says they'd be supporting pseudonyms in some vague form in a "future update".

limeblack• 15 years ago

> Seems I can't create a semi-anonymous email at gmail anymore?

Correct me if I misunderstood, but I believe you can just use the old gmail sign up url http://mail.google.com/mail/signup

As mentioned in the article, you can also still use the old google account sign up to url https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount .

tonfa2• 15 years ago

> Seems I can't create a semi-anonymous email at gmail anymore?

Since using a non "real name" only disables the G+ part of the Google account, you are still able to create a semi anonymous gmail.

Kadrith2• 15 years ago

That could be one way for anyone concerned with the integration to get around this. Create a fake name, Google will disable the G+ profile and you can still use Gmail.

nitrogen• 15 years ago

I wanted to raise a similar concern for YouTube accounts. If you have to provide your Real Name to post to YouTube, a lot of people will self-censor, and some important or valuable videos may never get posted.

technoslut2• 15 years ago

I'm rather disturbed by these troubling trends that Google has taken. I'm not interested in G+ nor do I want to be involved in the battle between Google and Facebook for the greater number of users. I enjoy using some of their services but it's getting to the point where I'd rather pay for email and look for an alternative RSS solution.

At some point Google is going to be investigated for this. Like MS, they'll probably get away with this in the US because Google is US based and they let businesses get away with anything, but the EU will hammer them.

melling3• 15 years ago

Are you disturbed my Microsoft completely dominating the desktop? 90% market share for a decade and a half. Microsoft essentially beat the US govt. Nothing significant happened. By the time restrictions were imposed, the competition was dead.

In Google's case, it's highly doubtful that they will ever dominate social. The barriers to entry for the online world are way too low.

hyperbovine• 15 years ago

And lo and behold, Apple came along and completely out-innovated MS and is utterly kicking their ass on all fronts. No government intervention required.

technoslut2• 15 years ago

>Are you disturbed my Microsoft completely dominating the desktop? 90% market share for a decade and a half.

Yes, I was but I don't blame MS for that. There were no competent alternatives during the mid 90s. Apple was on the verge of going out of business and Linux wasn't ready for the average user yet. I don't blame Google either for dominating search. They (MS & Google) are or were the best at what they do. The problem arises when companies leverage a monopoly to enter another business.

>In Google's case, it's highly doubtful that they will ever dominate social.

With this news it is far more likely that they will (when this is about the number of users) if a user's only intent is to create a YouTube or Gmail account and have to accept all three.

marquis3• 15 years ago

One element I find disturbing is that since our work email migrated to Google Apps and because G+ accounts are enabled by default when you happen to be logged in to the browser and visit G+, people I don't know or care about are adding me to their G+ circles. While I ignore these, it does concern me that if I click on the wrong button and add someone, suddenly I have established a relationship with, say, a client that can't be revoked easily.

eitally• 15 years ago

This isn't true if you're a paying customer (Google Apps for Business). G+ is an opt-in service.

jrockway9• 15 years ago

I click on the wrong button and add someone, suddenly I have established a relationship with, say, a client that can't be revoked easily.

Even if you were forced to use Google+, un-circling someone doesn't generate a notification, so there's no reason to worry about creating a relationship you can't revoke.

yanw5• 15 years ago

How is it you figure that this warrants any sort of investigation exactly? I don't see any other issues with this neither: it applies for new signups, existing users aren't required to open G+ account or anything else.

It's funny how people keep getting "shocked and surprised" by obvious moves, what use is it having a profile or a cohesive identity system for all your services if you don't incorporate it into said services or even use it when users sign up?!

darien• 15 years ago

Eventually Google will rollover their existing users and force them to signup for Google Plus. They are already guilty of this strategy when they forced Gmail users to link their youtube accounts.

creativityland2• 15 years ago

It is definitely troubling to think about this in the long run and how this entangles into search/email and privacy concerns...

And honestly I don't think the G+ users will want their Facebook friends to be on G+, same way that most users on Youtube have separate accounts from their Google/Gmail account. From the looks of this, G+ will just push away users from other Google services, and causing confusion.

yanw5• 15 years ago

Confusion? this is the first time Google has a clear and cohesive identity platform for all their services.

dannyr• 15 years ago

If you look at it, Facebook is doing the same thing. Facebook has email & you need to set up a social network account.

Google is turning into a social company and so it needs their users to set up a social network profile.

You can easily choose another email service if you don't like it. This only applies to new users so there's really no lock-in since none of your data are at Google yet.

hamidpalo• 15 years ago

Wasn't there a big huge DOJ case a while back about a company using one monopoly to try and create another? I forget.

luckystarr• 15 years ago

Google is the new Yahoo! now.

toddsundsted• 15 years ago

I remember AltaVista's decline into a "portal" -- to the point where it was hard to spot the search box on their home page, and the honest results in the "results" -- and Google's arrival on the scene with super-clean, relevant search. I feel like history is repeating itself _in a fashion_.

Who are the rising stars in general-purpose web search?

nolok2• 15 years ago

You have an obvious button on the top right to disable all personalized results on google. If you want to make this permanent, go in your search options and select "non-personalized result" as the default; you then get the same results as if you were not connected.

I don't like the trend were they are going, but you're comparing apples and oranges here.

marshray4• 15 years ago

I hadn't thought of it this way before, but it sure smacks of Lycos/Yahoo/Netscape portalization of Google to me.

saddino• 15 years ago

"Who are the rising stars in general-purpose web search?"

duckduckgo.com

Drbble2• 15 years ago

DDG is far from solving the problem of generating useful results. It is mostly just wikipedia plus some chaff.

spodek• 15 years ago

I predict Google and Facebook, successful as they are, will provide the greatest motivation for the growth of Diaspora. People in charge of so much centralized data will be unable to resist using it. They are in an arms race.

Diaspora is small now, but the motivation to use it will only keep growing.

jrockway9• 15 years ago

To the average user, having all the data in one place is very useful. Imagine a world where you type your friend's name into Google, and you see the emails you've sent her, photos you've taken, relevant Google+ posts and shared links, and so on. Giving all your data to Google means you get to see it all on one search results page. That's pretty convenient.

(Google is also very very serious about protecting your data. Don't let Facebook's lax privacy let you think Google does the same thing. The only entity you have to fear is the government, and that's true of any internet service provider.)

eliasmacpherson2• 15 years ago

"GCreep: Google Engineer Stalked Teens, Spied on Chats (Updated)" http://gawker.com/5637234/

Not wholly sure what the outcome of the above was, but you could also fear google's employees if you were so inclined. Or anyone that had undue/inappropriate access to/sway with google's employees. They are only many thousands of humans after all.

theBobMcCormick• 15 years ago

HAhahahahahahaha!

Diaspora is a non-starter. Have you ever even tried to explain it to a non-technical user? Their eyes glaze over with disinterest.

It's to complicated, and no clear benefits other than the rather abstract benefit of de-centralized control.

runn1ng• 15 years ago

I have a problem with Diaspora that it doesn't add anything useful to the concept of social network. For an end user, it's basically Facebook/Google+, but worse; it doesn't really try to engage user.

When I register as a new user on Facebook or Google+, it is constantly trying to engage me, trying to somehow connect me with new people. If I log in to JoinDiaspora, I just stare at empty screen and my two inactive Diaspora friends, which is exactly what I saw 1 year ago when I tried it the first time. There are no user groups, no way to actually DO ANYTHING on the site.

The fact that the main joindiaspora hub it's still invite-based doesn't help things.

Edit: Oh, I just realized I can search for tags on joindiaspora. Only that it does take about 30 seconds for the results to really start showing; first, I see just empty screen.

I realize that making social network is hard, but diaspora to me still looks like very early alpha.

joshuahedlund2• 15 years ago

Until now, creating a Google account was quite simple.

You don't usually see websites boasting that their processes used to be simpler.

mdwrigh2• 15 years ago

It isn't "their" process, this is an unofficial news site that reports on Google, not Google themselves.

RexRollman2• 15 years ago

I am not a fan of this move. It makes me feel like I did when Microsoft starting including Internet Explorer in Windows, but instead of forced middleware bundling, we have forced service bundling.

Karunamon2• 15 years ago

You were bothered when an operating system started including an internet browser? That's rather silly, don't you think?

Half_a_Bee• 15 years ago

You have to understand that all those years ago, Microsoft occupied the position Google does now - if they did or announced anything at all, it was obviously sinister in the eyes of a lot of geeks.

Drbble2• 15 years ago

A broken browser that intentionally broke the Internet.

badclient• 15 years ago

Google's doing a great job of fooling the media with the G+ hype. I just hope they keep themselves in check internally and know that G+, as it stands, is a shit product with little adoption once you take away the forced adoption.

If they don't care about it and just want to pump up their signup numbers, heck just make every google.com visitor a G+ member automatically. Oh wait, they are beginning to do just that...

phunel5• 15 years ago

I've been struggling with the tradeoffs in keeping Google as my email (among other things) provider. I own a few VPS's and have plenty of hardware that could serve as a private server. What has kept me from hosting my email up to this point is the fear of being inadvertently blacklisted by something like Spamhaus, downtime from Comcast (my ISP) making service intermittent, and generally having the email server management take over my life. In short, the same issues that affect many here by evidence of the recent chart of Y Combinator companies' hosting decisions (http://jpf.github.com/domain-profiler/ycombinator.html?2011).

I could host my own email on my VPS, but going through the trouble of that - it seems to make sense to just go ahead and host on a box I fully control.

To this point I admit I have had no issues with gmail or Google apps, both of which I use. But the landscape seems to be changing and I'm curious if anyone is considering migrating to their own hardware and what tools, etc. they are employing to make that process easily manageable as well as effective. I use email for sensitive business discussions, but the security required is tempered by the obvious fact that if the email doesn't get there, it's less than worthless.

I do have PGP setup, and I thought that this would be a good tradeoff while using a third party provider - but it is nearly impossible to keep partners and clients active in using it, if they use it at all.

The concept of the Freedombox (freedomboxfoundation.org) seems interesting, but academic at this point.

Anyone running their personal email servers care to comment on the overhead? Would a simple Postfix, Dovecot, Roundcube install with Spamassassin suffice? What are the pitfalls? Not worth the tradeoff of using Google Apps?

I'm thinking about keeping my websites on a VPS and using a MX record to point to a private, dedicated email server I keep in my house or other private property. Anyone running a similar setup?

jrockway9• 15 years ago

So, if you want to relay mail out of your MX, it's going to be flaky from a DSL or cable line. The reason is because much of the email coming out of those IP ranges is virus-sent spam, many mail servers block those IP ranges. (ISPs are doing a pretty good job filtering port 25 these days. The only really annoying spam I get is from Sprint's mobile network. I would block those IP ranges, but I want to be able to relay mail from my Sprint mobile phone :)

I run a mail server on my Linode and have never had trouble sending mail. It's easy to see if you're on a blacklist and take corrective action, though I've never had to do this.

I recently switched from Postfix to Exim4 and like it a lot more. The spam checking is much better integrated and lets you reject messages at DATA time with full spam information, so real messages that are auto-rejected at least bounce with an informative message.

Finally, if you don't like delayed mail, get a backup MX. It's very easy to set up for your friends that run their own primary MX, and you can return the favor. (I buy a backup MX service, but run backup MX for people that have asked.)

phunel5• 15 years ago

Good idea on the backup MX.

I do have Exim4 setup on a Linode for outgoing status updates (mainly Fail2Ban), but have yet to use it in lieu of Gmail/Google Apps.

As mentioned previously I'm a bit nervous about leaving my mail on a third party box - though Linode has been nothing but a reliable service to date.

esonderegger• 15 years ago

I just checked to make sure, and creating new email addresses using google apps does not require creating a g+ account.

I've been happy with using google apps for my email server and have had no trouble staying in the free tier. It's clearly not for everyone, but it sounds like it will involve far fewer headaches for you than managing your own server.

phunel5• 15 years ago

True, but Google Apps tends to follow Gmail's lead, albeit at a delayed pace.

I agree that Google Apps is the best of the bunch, and much easier to manage than your own server - but the privacy concerns have just nagged at me for years. I keep getting back to the core issue: is giving this (or any) company the sum of all my written communications in exchange for ease of use worth it? It's something I'm still struggling with.

mhurron2• 15 years ago

I run my own mail server for my personal mail at home off my DSL line. Most blacklists will block residential IP ranges, but it is easy to get around that. You can simply set up a smart relay to another SMTP server, probably your ISP's. When your mail server sends mail to the outside, world, it doesn't send directly to the recipient's mail server, it sends it to your ISP, and they relay it out.

phunel5• 15 years ago

Thank you. This seems like a fair tradeoff. In my case I imagine I'd just use my VPS as the relay, rather than my ISP. Just so I understand clearly, incoming mail will not be an issue and can be sent directly to your personal box, but relay the outgoing via your established ISP/VPS/etc?

hga5• 15 years ago

I know this is not an answer to your question, but the way I address these issues (especially since I have to do more system administration that I'd like to already) it to do business with laser focused companies. I.e. email from Fastmail (although they recently got bought by Opera, but so far besides some growing pains as they build out their base system this has not been a problem), rsync.net for backup (yeah, more expensive per GB than S3 but it does exactly what I want and that was "tornado tested" after the Joplin, Missouri May 22nd 2011 EF5 tornado) and Skype (except they were of course bought by Microsoft ... I and my friends are looking for alternatives since we know we'll need one sooner or later).

Companies that do only one thing well are often a better bet than companies that do many things at whatever level of quality (and while I don't advertise, I do perceive the quality of Google's search "product" dropping due to things like removing + from term modifiers).

jrockway9• 15 years ago

I wouldn't worry about Google's software quality. We do a really good job on that front. Every machine that Google owns is capable of running Gmail, and failover is a planned use case. Data centers can fail, machine can fail, code can fail, and everything will still work for you. (The process is fully automated and regularly tested.) We have an entire job classification for people whose job it is to build automated testing infrastructure -- not write the tests, but write tools to make writing tests easier. We have people to write the tests, too, and of course every developer writes tests. Every code change, no matter how small, is reviewed by one other developer who knows the relevant code deeply. And all changes are tested internally before they ever go public.

So basically, it's pretty rare that you would lose your email. It's happened before, but everything was restored from tape. I run my own email server for fun, but I'd be lying if I said that I did it better than Google.

dustingetz• 15 years ago

Old create-account link requires you already have a non-gmail email address. You can't create a gmail account from scratch without the new form (with G+).

mijnpc• 15 years ago

Another desperate attempt to get more G+ users :)

gkka• 15 years ago

I agree

Aloisius• 15 years ago

Google is going to do whatever it takes to drive people from that competing advertising network known as Facebook.

Have you done a search for "Facebook" on Google recently? Notice the gigantic ad for Google+ on the right?

http://img576.imageshack.us/img576/199/screenshot20120120at1...

If that isn't anti-competitive, I don't know what is. If I had a competing service, I couldn't advertise for "facebook" on Google, but Google can stick a gigantic ad for their competing service there?

keturn• 15 years ago

Bah. I've been happily using Google services with a non-Google email for years now, but when I created a gmail account for that ID, all my notifications from all google products (e.g. google calendar notifications, notifications from other Google products like Google Code) suddenly started going to the gmail mailbox instead of the address they'd been going to all along.

Fortunately I was able to delete the gmail account to reverse this, but it was relatively difficult to find the "turn off gmail" button. And if all new accounts get gmail, they may stop letting you turn off gmail at all.

New Google Accounts Require Gmail and Google+

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