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Comment by mattwdelong | Hacker News Reader

A little tangent here, but does anyone else find it increasingly difficult to manage multiple sessions on the Google platform?

I keep having difficulty not knowing which google account I'm logged into, having issues enabling/disabling features before I have access to a feature X and then, I find out feature X is not available with google apps hosted account; but it's available with my gmail account.

There really isn't a solution other than using chrome, incognito window and n browsers per google account. I sure it's a minority of the google user base having this issue, or I'm sure it would be dealt with. Anyone else experience this, and have a solution? I'm just short of abandoning data in all my accounts but one, and moving everything over to it (and forward emails).

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Go here, accept the conditions https://www.google.com/accounts/MultipleSessions

On the right top menu, Switch Accounts, sign in to second account, (may need to accept conditions again). At this point, you will be able to switch back and forth, between the two accounts

I've done that and have been using it - it has many limitations but it's a small step in the right direction.

>I sure it's a minority of the google user base having this issue, or I'm sure it would be dealt with.

/ Presumably it's better for Google to have you use one account and hold your real identity there converging all your work and social online aspects in the same place. I see it as broken for the user but better for Google as it pushes users towards single accounts and real identity.

This is a huge pain in the ass. I have a GMail account I use for mailing lists, a hosted Apps account I use for work and my personal email is also on a hosted Apps account. It's impossible to keep them straight - the only thing that saves my sanity is Mailplane.

This is all combined with the fact that my personal Apps account appears to be half-migrated, and I see different documents in Google Docs depending on how I log into that account. It's insane.

This is the exact same setup I have; two hosted accounts and one gmail account. I had conflicting accounts with gmail + my hosted apps account, and merged them which created a bunch of issues (I was warned, I suppose)

I don't know if the personal choice of how we use our accounts is abnormal, but the resulting effect is definitely not something desirable.

Separate browsers, or separate profiles (namely Firefox profiles).

An app-specific browser like MozillaPrizm/Fluid/etc might be your best bet, just create specific apps for each user/session.

btw, I generally use 2 google profiles (google-apps vs. google) and they coexist in one browser for me.

The concept of fluid multi-identity in any device or OS has long been difficult to manage, and I don't think it's done well on any UI-based system.

Firefox = Primary, Chrome=Secondary, IE9=test. Generally works OK. Still a bit painful though. Especially now that Apps/gmail are consolidated.

'Switch account' works well for me - is there a use case where this is not an option for you?

Yeah, "Switch account > Sign into another account" actually works, but it took me a long time to find it.

Google Chrome dev has support for multiple account profiles. Each account has it's own windows with their own cookies/exts/apps/history.

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