I don't think it's just google+. I noticed my gmail account logging me into youtube yesterday. I've avoided opening a google+ account so as to avoid that kind of thing from happening, I have remained logged out of my gmail account since.
I will miss the personalization. But for me this too will mean less browsing while logged into Google services. It is not the same scale like Spotify requiring a Facebook account, but it is close enough to make me cringe and worry about my favorite online services.
That's a good idea, though still not quite frictionless enough for lazy people like me.
It's a bigger issue when I'm just browsing around and click a link that takes me to YouTube.
What's needed (as someone else here suggested, more or less) is an add-on smart enough to recognize a set of domains and always follow these links by creating a private mode window.
Browse Facebook and related sites in one window, Google products in another, and use a third for general web-browsing, all persistent across sessions, but without any sandbox knowing what's going on in any other.
I've just moved to using Empathy and Evolution(ugh) to check mail. I'd be interested in getting a command line version of the two up.
The sad thing is: There would be an easy solution to solve this trickery. Just giving Firefox a right click option. Not "open in new window", not "open in new tab" but "open in clean (aka cookie free) window".
With I had the coding skills to realize that. Or is there already something similar out?
Mozilla's BrowserID focused more on a really good way of managing a single identity (per Firefox profile), whereas Chrome's MultiProfiles were focused on easily switching between multiple profiles with separate cookies, history, passwords, etc (whether that's for multiple people or a single person with multiple but separate needs online).
Multi-profiles seem good for your need...you can stay signed in with a persistent google cookie in one window (maybe just keeping gmail open), while doing all your regular surfing without the cookie in another window, under a different profile.
Both are still in development though. I don't see multi-profiles in about:flags in chrome, and some poking around shows you might need to run chrome with a command flag, which is a pain. Reviewers seem to like it, though.
edit: it's not a nice integrated browser function, but I guess you could get equivalent functionality by just running different Firefox instances with different profiles. I don't know if there are any problems with that approach, though.
Still useful to relink to a throwaway account instead of the main gmail account. But I'm not sure the multiple account will let you stay logged in correctly..
I will continue to shun Google+ because of the stories about people being shut out of it over the 'looks like a real name' rules because I have an Android phone and can't risk losing access to it.
Is there a space for a startup that will make a gmail alternative. There is toons of saas startups but none in this space.
At the moment I don't mind using google's infrastructure, I have had an overhanging inclination to get away from their services since Buzz happened. Convenience prevailed! Even without the new auto signup/login, they already have my IP indexed usage stats which could be joined on my gmail logged in IP address/cookie, but to have it out in the open like this probably allows third parties to go looking for it. This new development is linking your real name with what you consume on youtube. I have no interest in giving up that info so easily.