Google+ is now available with Google Apps | Hacker News Reader

Google+ is now available with Google Apps

googleenterprise.blogspot.com

200 pointstomkarlo48 comments

No way to join accounts, again. I can not understand why this kind of basic functionality is missing.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I mean there is now way to connect a Google Apps account to another Google account so that they can share certain services. I sort of understand why they think they don't need it for email, but having two separate G+ account is completely superfluous, thanks to the Circles system.

It's not like you can join two Facebook accounts you made with different emails either. That alone makes it clear that this is isn't "basic functionality".

Creating two Facebook accounts is an anomaly, not the norm. To use a personal G account & Google Apps, you MUST create two different accounts. Your example here comparing this to Facebook isn't valid, IMO.

You can create a Facebook account with two e-mails attached to it, though.

I don't think that this is the same. I can not think of a reason why one should have two Facebook accounts, except for maintaining two complete separate sets of relations, for example for anonymity.

But having several Google accounts can happen much easier, for a variety of reasons. For example, I have used a GMail address for since my teen years. Turns out I don't actually like the format stupidnickname@gmail.com anymore and would rather have something like myname@mydomain.com, but I'd still like to keep the GMail interface. Google Apps is wonderful for this, so I made an account there.

But I can not just ignore my old account, as I still get email sent to the address (I forward it) and I used the Google Talk functionality for my Jabber needs. Also, I bought my first Android apps with my old account, so they are linked to it. That means that I have to use my old account as the first one on any Android device, or I can't download my apps again.

What I would wish for is this: Have services that can be linked to any identifier/email, and shared between any number of them, so I could, for example, have two sets of email (one private, one business), but just one of GTalk, G+, Feedburner and Analytics.

I know that implementing this on top of the current system might be hard. I still think that this is the kind of functionality one can expect from a company like Google, and I would gladly pay for it.

You used to be able to. There was an explicit account merge feature back when they unified college networks into a larger master network.

Wait, what do you mean? Right now I have two Gmail tabs open at the same time, one personal, one work. I'm using the multiple accounts feature: https://accounts.google.com/b/0/MultipleSessions

You need to keep the accounts separate because enterprise apps have different privacy issues; your employer in enterprise settings is specifically given the ability to see all of your data. Would you really want them seeing your personal account the same way?

A very good point. I also use the same method as you do, but you probably know how flaky this can be sometimes, too (At least if you use all this: Gmail, G+, Analytics, Google Music).

You are right that there are cases where you would absolutely would want to have completely separate accounts. That's why I would like to have this as an option: Linking two "services" from different users, or attaching two users/emails to the same service.

As it is right now, Google+ for Apps is mostly useless for anyone who already has a G+ account. And I don't think that Google really wants to release mostly useless products.

I've been holding off from joining Google+ precisely because I didn't want to revert to my GMail account.

This was the sane approach to take and especially people in the HN community really can't say they haven't seen this coming.

But Plus is a consumer service (just like Picasa, Youtube, and everything else outside of the core suite) and even though it can theoretically be covered under an enterprise agreement, there is no audit or control capability for domain administrators on the consumer services.

This is a deal-breaker for most enterprises, as is the current requirement of public profiles.

If you go to youtube while using a google apps account it specifically warns you that everything you do can be monitored by your company.

Domain administrators can completely disable access to these services.

I am a Google Apps users and I had to enable Google+ explicitly.

From the article:

For those of you who’ve already started using Google+ with a personal Google Account and would prefer to use your Google Apps account, we’re building a migration tool to help you move over. With this tool, you won’t have to rebuild your circles, and people who’ve already added you to their circles will automatically be connected to your new profile. We expect this migration option to be ready in a few weeks, so if you’d like, you can go ahead and get started with your Apps account today and merge your connections once the tool is available.

Congrats on Google getting it out this week. There was quite a bit of cynicism after the announcement last week.

I've been holding off joining until my personal Apps domain was enabled as I've still not finished migrating all my docs from Gmail yet - I didn't want any more loose ends.

Just wanted to echo the thoughts of mtkd. I have my own personal domain mostly because I want to maintain control of my own email address. I connected it to Google Apps (and am willing to pay for this feature), because Gmail is great.

But when Google rolls out a new service which doesn't have Apps support (which they do all the time), it's pretty frustrating. The irony is that if I didn't use Apps, and instead hosted my domain myself, I'd have better compatibility with Google products than when I do. Frustrating as hell, especially if you're paying for it.

I understand that they're stuck between vanity users (like me) and enterprise users, but these problems should be thought about more structurally and addressed beforehand.

Now if only they could get their multiple account sign-in feature polished. I use one Google account for Youtube, one for Google groups, and then my Apps account for email and plus. Why can't I set my preferred account for each service?

The day I went to Google.com and noticed I was signed in was the first sign of trouble. Why do I have to have my account used everywhere I go? I don't want you to log me in for searching when I check my email.

I would argue that you are probably the exception from the norm -- most users have only one account and would probably consider it a major inconvenience to have to log in multiple times across different Google properties.

Except they do have a multiple-accounts feature, so obviously it's important enough to support explicitly. I also hate the way it works. I have to use different browsers to have it work without irritation.

Hmm. Maybe there's a plugin.

Now that is has been turned on, I got to agree with saurik (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3132566). It doesn't really make sense. Why would I want my social network profile attached to and controlled by my school or work? I remember a family member going through a difficult transition when he was laid off from a job he was working at for decades and no longer had access to just his email/contacts. If people use Google+ like Google wants them to, there is going to be even more important stuff held in accounts that the user doesn't really control.

Hangouts for Docs can be useful, I suppose, and I am glad those with custom domains are invited to the party, but it seems like an awkward fit.

I think is largely aimed at the people who are using Google Apps for their own domain. I certainly wouldn't want a corporate account tied to my Google+ identity, but my own domain and email address which I've been using for over a decade definitely fit the bill.

Yep, that's the boat I'm in. I've got google apps for my own domain, and maintain 2 personal accounts on there (one for friends, one for acquaintances), my work is also on google apps. That means that there are already 3 google accounts that I'm juggling (or struggling with) and I was loathe to add a 4th account just to use google plus.

But it has further use as well. You can have your own personal identity on your gmail address and your official corporate identity on apps. Mixing roles is never a good idea and g+ on apps makes it easier to avoid.

If you don't want your social profile controlled by your school or work, don't use your school or work email address as your login. I'm not sure that's even specific to Google+...

There's a reverse of that use case: a school or org may want to provide social networking to its users, specifically for that context, e.g. exchange of information within the institution.

> There's a reverse of that use case: a school or org may want to provide social networking to its users, specifically for that context, e.g. exchange of information within the institution.

Wow, that's actually really interesting. I hadn't thought of that angle before but I could see that happening.

> exchange of information within the institution

yes. an organization's "knowledge" is mostly persisted in email. G+ is a huge step forward in knowledge sharing, discovery, and recovery within an organization.

Keep in mind that you are assuming that something that costs on the order of 50 cents a month necessarily implies that only big corporations rather than individuals use it.

There are lots of people who are freelancers or founders who use email at their own domain as their personal email.

It is free for individuals, or was maybe they changed that?

I ised it for free for seversl years but just started paying in the hope of getting better support. Given I didnt I am probably going to go back to free.

I meant the total cost, I was including domain registration. Apps for your domain is free for businesses and individuals under a certain threshold.

Still free but the link is kind of buried.

They also recently dropped the free version to 10 accounts instead of 50.

"Why would I want my social network profile attached to and controlled by my school or work?"

The better question is why would you want your email address controlled by one company? Those of who decided we want something portable that doesn't end in "@gmail.com" now have access to Google Plus.

I'm a big fan of all Google products in general. People who understand the product anticipates it and are excited about it, like Google Wave for example. But sometimes it's less about the product than the way it is presented. Waves for example was presented as the end-all, stand alone collaborative tool. But when nobody understood it enough to use it the general public doesn't care about it. In the case of Google+ it is presented as a Facebook competitor in the social networking market. Everyone and their moms are already on Facebook so why would people want to update another profile and do more work. However, the advantage of Google+ is that it is backed by the Google infrastructure, which includes the established Gmail user base. Gmail already feels like a social networking product; you can easily chat with friends and new acquaintances, share events with other with Google Calendars, and use tons of Google Apps. The point is Google already is a social network. We don't need to be confused with a new product called Google+. It's social networking features should have just been revealed as a subset of Gmail. Many are already familiar with Gmail and new social networking features will draw more people to it.

Google+ was never presented as a Facebook competitor. They tried social networking with Gmail with Buzz and that failed miserably. I don't really know what the problem is. The uber bar is more than sufficient.

I never used Buzz. It just confused me when I saw the Buzz icon like when the 'mark as important icon' was new in Gmail. Maybe it would have worked if people can use the chat box to share content and do their status update. And then the feed can all paginate in one or more email maybe right above the first email in the inbox. People are all used to chat and checking their mail, maybe even naturally 'Buzz'. Don't really know too much about uber bar.

Well, activated Picasa Web Albums, Google Chat and Google+ and it doesn't work. Maybe in a few days?

it takes 15-20 mins to setup. Dunno why, but mine is working now.

Mine got activated instantly, although I already had Picasa and Google Chat activated.

Make sure you actually saved the settings.

From the headline, I thought this might be an option to create a private network for your domain, like Google's internal version of Google+. This is nice, but that would be much more interesting.

Curious to see how much this bumps the active Google+ account numbers. Google claims about 40 million Apps users right now.

I'd guess not much. Most people who wanted to use G+ already signed up with a Gmail account. Unless you're counting one person maintaining personal and professional profiles as 2 active accounts...

I wish Google would just allow my normal Google account to be associated with a domain for Gmail...

Can't sign in with Android app.

or the iOS app. I suspect updates will be rolling out in the next few days. This is life on the bleeding edge.

yeah same problem.

"Your Browser is no longer supported.

http://www.google.com/support/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&p... "

Now, I get this idiotic error since I don't use one of the major web browsers (FF, IE, Chrome, Safari).

I really hate the websites (such as read.amazon.com) that ignores the other webkit based web browsers (uzbl, luakit, surf...) with same capabilities with Chrome and Firefox. (I don't even compare them with IE!)

That's why we should use feature-detection instead of browser/version-detection for web development.

No way to login with the profile that I had created before Google banned Apps users. I'm still looking at my own profile as an anonymous visitor and only thing I can do is to create a new profile!

I'm really happy for this news, thanks Google.

I was begging to feel a little left out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com