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Comment by rlu | Hacker News Reader

At least I have the option to delete my FB account. On the other hand, Google has lately been aggressively pushing me to convert my YouTube account into a G+ account. Once this is actually forced upon me, is there any way to 'delete' my Google+ account without deleting my YouTube one?

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I get pestered with messages from Google on various services asking for my phone, merging/creating accounts, joining Google+, etc. Often the UI is so that for an average user it's not clear how to opt-out from it. Undoubtedly on purpose.

Each time you want to sign out of Google, there's an ever present, huge bright button - "Join Google+". I suppose more than one person clicked it by accident or out of frustration :) On rare occasions when I use Chrome, it never forgets to remind me how I'm missing out and should totally sign-in to Chrome.

Staying relevant is hard work :)

It seems so: https://plus.google.com/u/0/downgrade/

Thank you. I never use Google+ and I was so irritated by their youtube migration attempts recently that I didn't look back.

That's weird. I got asked _once_ if I wanted to migrate my YouTube account to G+, I said no, and never got asked again.

I've seen stories both from people who continually got pestered (like myself) and from people who didn't (such as yourself). I dunno why though.

I get all those messages too. I think it's because I'm using an old youtube account that I later connected to the google one.

That's what happened to me too.

are you actually hitting the "No" button, and providing a reason, or are you just closing the dialog?

I gave "No" with reasons, and got asked two or three times.

When was the last time you logged in, from an logged out state?

I get pestered every time I log in.

I'm pretty much always logged in. Just to be sure, I went to YouTube, logged out and then in again, but nothing different happened.

I have a standard Google Account username (i.e. my username and not my real name appears when I comment) and it's not linked in any way to G+ (although I _do_ use G+ often, might that be the difference?).

IIRC, this removes the ability to use hangouts as well.

> You’ll need a full Google+ account to get access to all of Hangouts’ features including group video calls, sharing photos, and using Hangouts with Google+ circles.

https://support.google.com/hangouts/answer/2944865?hl=en&ref...

A friend turned off Google+ and Hangouts was entirely shut down for him, even on the browser side. I'm not sure if that's a recent change, but deleting a Google+ profile seems to cause some unexpectedly bad things to happen, like that.

I know for a fact it is impossible to use Hangouts on iOS devices without maintaining a Google+ profile. A friend was forcibly signed out when she deleted the profile it created for her using the iOS app. Either Google+ is on or Hangouts isn't a stable option.

Edit: To clarify, two separate friends who don't like/use Google+. Sorry if I'm being confusing when trying to add context.

Yes, I just did so today:

http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/16774/how-do-i-le...

I know it's not the best solution, but I have a dummy G+ account for my youtube account, so it doesn't pester me.

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