Hacker News Reader

Comment by lenazegher | Hacker News Reader

I don't really understand how this process works. I use multiple accounts from the same machine every day. I'm usually signed into more than one at the same time. But there's no indication that the accounts have been "merged" to any degree, or there being a primary account.

Can someone shed some more light?

View on HN

The OP checked the "stay signed in" option when logging in to his or her Google account on another computer and all of the accounts that were logged in were listed in one menu. He thought Google had merged the accounts and ended up deleting his account.

The solution is simple, just click the sign out button and Google signs out all accounts that are configured to "stay signed in." Alternatively, he could have cleared his cookies or waited for them to expire.

Some people have been saying this is because of bad UX on Google's part. Google is kind of in a catch-22 situation here. They want to upgrade how multiple users check their Gmail on one browser but no one wants to learn how use their new system (I got frustrated when they introduced their new UI to compose emails and had to show a tutorial on how to use it.)

Here is a thought - why don't they use the email address and password to distinguish between users....

They do... The problem is a possibly confusing UI for multiple sign-ins (distinct email addresses and passwords). Most sites don't have this as a feature so there's not a standard UI for it [yet].

The "primary" will have a /u/0/ in the address. It's the one you logged into first if all accounts were logged out. It's the one it defaults to if you go to other google services (plus, youtube, etc).

Nothing exclusive about it, except that you logged into it first sequentially.

This is not something that "normal" people will pick up on.

Possible id10t error? I've shared G logins on a few machines with others for years and no one has ever thought that their accounts were "merged" and deleted them in the effort to "unmerge" them.

Same here. And I login regularly (with several of these accounts) in my girlfriend's laptop, in classes, etc.

I guess there's something more behind this story (probably PEBCAK).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com