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Google Technology

Google Tests Multiple Account Login 122

Posted by CmdrTaco from the yes-have-some dept.
tekgoblin noted joyous rumors for anyone forced to use multiple Google accounts "Wouldn't it be great if you could log into all of your Google accounts at the same time if you have multiple? Well it seems that Google may be implementing a way to do this in the near future. Right now it can be done with scripts such as a Greasemonkey script, but that isn't as easy as Google doing it for us. The people over at Google Operating System have had users submit a screenshot of what looks like a beta test for multiple account login. It appears that it will be available for Calendar, Code, Docs, Gmail, Reader, and Sites for the test but surely it will be across all Google apps when it's released."
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Google Tests Multiple Account Login More

Google Tests Multiple Account Login

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  • I've really been waiting for this!!! the script solution is kind-of buggy... Please release this for Google Apps fast!

    TIA :-)

    • Re:Finally!!! (Score:4, Informative)

      by netsharc ( 195805 ) on Thursday July 15, 2010 @11:14AM (#32914082)

      Several alternatives are there:
      1. Use different browsers: Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari
      2. Use different Firefox profiles ( http://lifehacker.com/231646/geek-to-live--manage-multiple-firefox-profiles [lifehacker.com] )
      3. Use the "private browsing" mode in browsers that provide them

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by thijsh ( 910751 )
        The problem is: those (good) solutions will not work for business situations where people just need to get work done, but have no clue about computers and browsers... At one of my jobs there are multiple secretaries working on different days, and they need access to each others and some general email addresses all hosted on Google Apps... Until now there was no good non-technical solution (aliases and mailing lists also were no option since you get mail double, and you can't see which has been answered by t

      • 3. Use the "private browsing" mode in browsers that provide them

        I'm holding out until someone creates a FireFox extension that makes a sound when Private Browsing is started. I'm thinking something along the lines of a robot voice loudly screaming PORN MODE ACTIVATED .

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by orabidoo ( 9806 )
        Or use the multifox [mozdev.org] extension for Firefox. It adds an option to the File menu to open a window with a "new Identity Profile", which doesn't share cookies with the main window. Works fine for me.

  • Get all pwned at the same time too? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheLink ( 130905 ) on Thursday July 15, 2010 @10:35AM (#32913486) Journal
    Get all accounts pwned at the same time too?

  • Not for me (Score:5, Informative)

    by Monkeedude1212 ( 1560403 ) on Thursday July 15, 2010 @10:36AM (#32913506) Journal

    Wouldn't it be great if you could log into all of your Google accounts at the same time if you have multiple?

    Who has multiple google accounts, and for what?

    I mean, don't get me wrong, I have lots of email addresses, but I be sure to spread them around. Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo are the ones I check frequently.

    I wouldn't want to put all my eggs in one basket, you know?

    • Re:Not for me (Score:5, Interesting)

      by telekon ( 185072 ) <<canweriotnow> <at> <gmail.com>> on Thursday July 15, 2010 @10:48AM (#32913708) Homepage Journal

      Who has multiple google accounts, and for what?

      I have multiple google accounts, one for personal, one for business, one for activism. Even just pertaining to Gmail, it's useful, because let's face it, the Gmail filter/label system is useful, but it's no procmail. This would be great, especially since I've just out of habit tended to use one account more than the others, so most of my contacts have that listed as my google talk address, plus that's the account Google Voice is tied to, so when I log out to check my Gmail or Docs in another account, I'm logged out of Voice, Docs, Talk, etc.... So, yeah, multiple log-ins would be SWEET!

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by rajji ( 1854384 )
        I'm already using a mobile web site http://fonet.mobi/ [fonet.mobi] which allows me to login to multiple web site like Google docs, flickr, youtube, picasa, linkedIn twitter etc without log-in multiple times . I have to login to their web site and link all my websites using Oauth technology.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TechnoFrood ( 1292478 )

      I have a personal account and a work account.

      The work account is mostly used for Analytics, but I do occasionally use docs (mostly for collaborative work on a spreadsheet).

      I prefer to keep the two separate, one reason being I don't want coworkers/bosses having my home email address(es).

    • My wife uses one account for her political career and one account for personal email.

      I have one Gmail account for personal email, and one for the Omaha Nighthawks Fan Club. I could tell people to email me at my address for the fan club, but it makes more sense to keep those emails in a seperate account that I could hand over to someone else in the future.

      I'd like to be able to check both email accounts easily and quickly.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Krneki ( 1192201 )
      I'm using yahoo email for forums, web, ... registration.

      But yahoo.com sucks so much I'll drop it as soon as gmail enables a quick way to use multiple accounts.

      I'd also like to forward all my working emails to a second gmail account.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jgerry ( 14280 ) *

      Who has multiple google accounts, and for what?

      I have three personal accounts: one for normal use, one for craigslist postings, and one for my music business. I will also have one work account in the next month as we're moving all our email / contacts / calendaring to Google Apps.

      I'd like to be able to stay logged into at least two at a time. I imagine plenty of other people would find use for this feature as well.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sancho ( 17056 ) *

      A few schools have outsourced their e-mail to Google. Many of those students came in with a Gmail account already, and some people may not want to redirect mail.

    • "Who has multiple google accounts, and for what?"

      Cheap pricks who don't want to pay for multi-gig Picasa accounts?

      Or use gmail to do their backups?

    • Google offers to host business mails, etc. on its own batch of Google Apps.

      Business have out-sourced their employee's mails & calendars to Google,
      Schools have out-sourced their students data to Google
      Service providers do that for mail and contacts too (My mobile phone does it).

      So people can end up having several different accounts on Google and wish to have a way to connect to all of them at the same time.

      I would be grateful if I could use my GMail contacts list (that I've been using for years) with my

    • I would like this for google analytics. I have a GA account at work that is different from my personal e-mail account.
    • I have about 5 gmail addresses that I check regularly. They're not really gmail though, they're actually just imap forwarders set up so that I can check them in gmail more conveniently than the webmail provided by my different web hosts - if I lost gmail I'd only lose some organization and convenience, the email is still back at the original host.

    • I have two google accounts with the same email address. Specifically google docs...

      I'll give you a moment to think about how that could have happened...

      Give up?

      The answer is that the email address is for a domain that uses google-apps for email and google docs, but didn't always have docs enabled. I already had a google account (for google docs) open with that email, so I now have one account in actual google docs and one in google apps docs for that domain.

      As proof, if I click on the "documents" link insid

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by he-sk ( 103163 )

      I have one GMail account for each website that requires registration and which I use regularly (E-Bay, Amazon, stuff like that). Makes it easy to figure out which sites sell my data to spammers.

      I have another GMail account for websites that I do not use regularly or where I don't care if they sell my data.

    • have you discovered the "+" tag for email, so you can have, say, example+slashdot@gmail, example+reddit@gmail and it all goes to the same example@gmail mailbox and you can then tag automatically.
    • I have a Google account and a Google Apps account. The extent to which these two work varies, with Google Docs failing miserably about a third of the time. It gets supremely confused by this and invariably tries to access Apps with my public Google account.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by CODiNE ( 27417 )

      Who has multiple google accounts, and for what?

      Some of us here are... *gasp!* married!

      I know... I know... it's gotta be a trick or something. Impossible!!

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by afex ( 693734 )
        this is sorta a joke and sorta serious, because i am also married and both of us have g-accounts; i don't really get your post though. 1) i have never needed to access my wife's account. are you spying on your spouse? 2) if not, are you using the same computer? this is probably worse than #1! :)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by CODiNE ( 27417 )

          1) Sharing a computer, so it's easier to check her inbox and go "Hey your sister emailed you"
          2) Like I said. :-)

          Maybe we're odd but no secrets and nothing to worry about. I don't look at pron so... no worries about her finding my stash.

          Only problem is around anniversaries it's harder to hide surprises.

          Safari is her browser, logged into her gmail, Chrome is mine. Yeah, one username too. It was too much of a hassle when one of us would have a contact the other needed, or the photo libraries getting confu

          • I am in the same situation, my wife and I can both check each others account, mostly this is done using separate computers, but otherwise separate browser instances (which is annoying).

            Though what I would like is being able to create an actual gmail aliases, not just the current username+alias@ style, though that is also useful, just so I am not exposing my account name to people.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by CODiNE ( 27417 )

              For the +whatever@gmail.com thing, you can use a lil social engineering. Use a simple code like the days date bob+06162010@gmail.com or whatever and point out "This is VERY IMPORTANT, it's part of my SPAM filter, if you don't put that in the email I won't see it".

              Then they'll be careful to put in the whole email and filter themselves for you. Otherwise the geeks will recognize it and ignore, but the non-geeks won't know what it is and will type it anyways. So anyone who WOULD ignore it can be "educated"

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Well I have my full name as an account, as well as hardcore_tentacle_fun_time for all my online gaming needs. I don't think this is for me though. Last thing I want is to get those mixed up. That would be one awkward email to mom.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fredjh ( 1602699 )

      On my own personal domain, I have my personal account, an account I use for shopping, registrations, and several specifically for shopping that I use a lot (although I'm phasing these out in favor of just shopping), like Newegg and Amazon... so really, I'd have my personal account, a shopping account, and a registration account. I only use gmail for personal email, I'd like to use it for everything.

    • Facebook...duh...how else you gonna maintain all of those neighbors?
    • I have had a personal Google account for years and now the University where I work is switching to Google for mail, calendars, etc. and I want to keep the two accounts separate.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by neoform ( 551705 )

      I have multiple accounts because I use google mail for my various domains/websites. It's annoying because I have to check 4 different mailboxes all the time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lwsimon ( 724555 )
      I have a personal account, and old personal account that I can't get rid of b/c i have Analytics and Adwords tied to it, and an account for each of the Apps domains that I administer. That's 6 Google accounts right now.

    • Who has multiple google accounts, and for what?

      For those of us that are paying for Google Apps Premier to use more space, it turns out that my Google Apps Premier login won't work for Blogger, Google Reader, and a few other Google services (and I have to use a normal free google/gmail account instead, and therefore logout from my primary account).

      And don't get me started on trying to press the 'Add to Google Calendar' from some web applications. That button takes me to the plain vanilla Google Calendar, and by the time, google reroutes me to my Google

    • I suspect a good portion of this is to support the millions of iPads (and the Android tablets that are soon to follow en mass) that are now out there that do not support multiple user accounts but are used by multiple people in the same household.

    • I have several websites using google apps, each domain name comes with its own accounts. I didn't RTFA, so I don't even know if this comment is applicable to the topic.

  • Only sensible (Score:5, Insightful)

    by joh ( 27088 ) on Thursday July 15, 2010 @10:44AM (#32913646)

    Being able to link all your accounts to one person (you) is fully in the interest of Google.

    • I see no reason for my news reading to be linked to my Youtube account and then linked to my Gmail account and my browsing habits - I'd rather keep them separate, thank you.
      Google keeps asking if I'd like to link them, and I want a "No, and don't ask me again" button to check.

      • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Google keeps asking if I'd like to link them, and I want a "No, and don't ask me again" button to check.

        but if you link your accounts you 'd only have to check that button once!

    • Re:Only sensible (Score:4, Informative)

      by Pollardito ( 781263 ) on Thursday July 15, 2010 @10:52AM (#32913800)
      They already can do a good job of that by monitoring cookies (i.e. they see the cookie from the previous account you were logged into when you login as the other), and they could probably get close with only IP and User-Agent [eff.org]. Ok, so that wouldn't differentiate two people sharing the same PC but with separate accounts (like husband/wife or siblings), but it would narrow it down that far.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by RulerOf ( 975607 )

        that wouldn't differentiate two people sharing the same PC

        I've got a fair number of shared machines behind my NAT, each with identical user agents and IP addresses. The whole cookie thing is more likely, because from agents and IP's, I would appear as one highly mobile individual with a lot of personas ;)

        With respect to seeing leftover cookies on web browsers when using a shared PC, it really, really saddens me that people just don't understand that I like my web browser the way it is, and I highly dislike having to log out of your shit and back into my own when

      • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        That's why I have multiple "firefox -P profileofchoice -no-remote" shortcuts on my launch bar. I just login to one account from a given persona... I actually have it set to remember the login. No switching.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Radtoo ( 1646729 )
        Yep, I think the sane assumption is that they probably already CAN link the information from these accounts unless you were insanely careful and secretive at all time. The question would be, do they, and if they do, what thing might they use the information for in the future?

    • i have two gmail accounts that i check regularly (meaning at least a couple times a day per account). i don't imagine google has had any trouble determining that they belong to the same user, what with the way i logout from one and into the next from the same location(s) multiple times per day.

    • In many cases, they already have this link. I'm sure I'm not the only one that is syncing multiple Google accounts on their Android-based phone.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Yikes - this makes news on Slashdot? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Hotmail has had this for years. Very convenient. I'm frankly disappointed at Slashdot Editors for thinking this tiny feature is news.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Arthur Grumbine ( 1086397 )

      And when Hotmail offers more than 10MB in attachments (I'm guessing 2012-2013) and Drag-and-Drop attachment functionality, it will also make news, despite Google having had the features "for years". A greater proportion of geeks use Gmail over Hotmail, and a lot of geeks (see the above posts) have more than one Gmail address (to keep parts of our digital lives separate). Just because this doesn't affect you, doesn't mean it's not relevant news for the rest of us, Mr. Ballmer.

    • Well, when iPhone users got a kind-of Copy/paste, it was news, right? Even though Windows Mobile phones have had it for years.

  • Incognito mode works for me... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kernel Corndog ( 155153 ) on Thursday July 15, 2010 @10:55AM (#32913838)

    I have two accounts: 1 personal, 1 business -- I just launch an incognito mode window in Chromium and everything has worked fine so far. Definitely a reason I love the Chromium-style ease of incognito mode windows versus Firefox's either-or style.

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Interestingly, this is one of the main reasons I found myself using Chrome at home. My wife loves to leave her GMail logged in. Before, in Firefox, I would launch chrome just to check my own email. Not a hassle, by any means. But, my wife just uses whatever browser is there in front of her... so, then when she was logged in on Chrome I started launching incognito mode to check mine. *So* much better than private mode in Firefox because you can have both "modes" open at the same time (and then you don't

  • Use Firefox and create multiple profiles. You will have a window for each of your Gmail accounts. http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing+profiles [mozilla.com]

  • Splitting accounts is a good idea (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Cato ( 8296 ) on Thursday July 15, 2010 @11:17AM (#32914110)

    Google sometimes 'locks down' your account for up to 24 hours, due to various criteria that aren't very well specified - e.g. http://www.google.co.uk/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=7226841f0bdafc8d&hl=en [google.co.uk] - hence it's a good idea not to have all your eggs in one basket.

    It has also been known for Google to disable accounts - http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-has-disabled-my-gmail-account/7871/ [searchenginejournal.com] - for no clear reason. Of course, if you pay for Google Apps premier edition, you do get a support phone line for this sort of thing.

  • This must be why I have to log in again every time I load the page.

    I have been after this feature for a while though, nice to see it arriving.

  • Maybe... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Arancaytar ( 966377 ) <arancaytar.ilyaran@gmail.com> on Thursday July 15, 2010 @11:50AM (#32914560) Homepage

    Maybe the reason why I own multiple accounts is that I don't want them connected, either for security or privacy reasons.

    So yeah, I'll pass on this.

    • I'll alert the media.

    • There will be no encouragement to force you to link them, because places like my university, that uses Google Apps, will definitely want to control authentication to our stuff, and let you do whatever you want with your own.

      There's already a useful page with radio buttons, when Apps get confused about what you are trying to connect to, it pops this page up and asks which account you are trying to connect with.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by 15973 ( 861573 )

      You're not the only person who thinks that way. I made the mistake of creating a YouTube account for someone (else) while I was logged into my Gmail, and it automatically (without prompting or warning) linked the two accounts (do a search for "unlink google and youtube accounts" for horror stories). If you do that nowadays, you can't "unlink" the accounts in any way. All you can do is delete an account and recreate it. Of course, once a Google username is taken, it can NEVER be used again, because you d

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dugeen ( 1224138 )
      Quite so. I don't want Google or anyone else to know for sure that my various accounts are run by the same person. Yes, they can no doubt make guesses based on IP addresses, but stating that I wanted them linked would make it difficult to deny plausibly that they weren't mine.
  • You can already link you gmail accounts (forwarding) and calendars (sharing). It seems like google is just looking to make it easier for everything else as well. The biggest difference I see is linking different groups of contacts. It will be easy enough to differentiate based on tagging.

  • I've got Blogger blogs with various identities, and the comment moderation messages all forward my main gmail account, but I have to log out and log in as another identity (or do it with a different browser) to approve/reject the comment.

    Simultaneous multiple login would make this much easier.

    - RG>

  • What I want to do the most is tie my free google account closer to my google app account. Why would I want multiple normal google accounts? But I, like many started off with a normal one and then opened a google apps account and realised there is not good easy way to check both in one place.

    Even now, I made the "mistake" of opening an app engine account with my normal google account. I'm starting to polish off my site and want to use a domain name. So I went to the control panel, click the appropriate bu
  • Why does there seem to be absolutely no community pressure for google to provide stronger authentication and account recovery features? The fact that google provides fantastic free products does not diminish their responsibility to mitigate the damage done to their clients by account hijacking. I think that anyone who knows somebody who has had an account irretrievably hijacked will understand this sentiment. If you are doing anything intensely personal or sensitive with gmail, you are an idiot. Too bad t
  • Those who have university Google Apps accounts already can do this. My daughter can log into her regular Gmail account and her university Gmail account simultaneously so obviously Google has had this figured out for a while. I know they have have different URLs but that's not what allows it; it's really just a matter of fixing the cookies to make this happen. I sure as heck could use this and would all the time.

  • Hmm, I have no tried to use it with different google mail accounts, but I use it with two corporate accounts and a normal private one and I have no problem. I do this in Safari, Firefox and Chrome without any problem. So what is new here?

  • I was an att.net webmail business user (my philosophy is, you get what you pay for) but AT&T discontinued its in-house webmail service and dumped me onto Yahoo Mail, an email service for children. The first change was that I can't view more than one email account at a time, I have to log out and in and out again. Drives me nuts. Now I either have to put up with Yahoo's incompetence or change my email address that I've had for years. Good to know Google, at least, respects its users.

  • At least with Google Apps accounts, I have been doing this for about a month, now. And yes, it's nice.

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