5 ms·

Google Quietly Rolls Out The Chrome Extension To Bring +1 To The Entire Web

45 points by schlichtm 15y ago

mcantor 15y ago
Imagine if Facebook made their own browser and offered an extension to “Like” any page on the web through it — same idea... Wouldn't the same idea be Facebook releasing a Chrome extension for their "Like" button...? Just sayin'.
- oldstrangers 15y ago
  Well I suppose the assumption is that the +1 button will eventually be baked into Chrome by default. And Android...
knowtheory 15y ago
Once again, totally fucking useless if you use a google apps account as your primary account. It's unbelievable to me how freaking useless all of google's shit is with regard to this problem. You can use multiple accounts, but none of their software, including their browser is multi-account aware.
- citricsquid 15y ago
  totally fucking useless doesn't even begin to describe my experience with multiple google apps and gmail accounts. I currently have 3 browsers running and a copy of google in "incognito mode" just so I can have all my email, docs and Youtube accessible without having to switch accounts constantly. Drives me damn near crazy.
  - rachelbythebay 15y ago
    This went around a few months ago: http://giveupandusemultiplebrowsers.com/ http://giveupandusemultiplebrowsers.com/ It's still valid.
  - callahad 15y ago
    If you like Chrome, try enabling "Multiple Profiles" in about:flags, then add a few profiles in chrome://settings/personal Each profile is isolated from the others in much the same way that Incognito and normal Chrome sessions are isolated. It's pretty handy.
    - mtogo 15y ago
      Firefox has a similar feature but it's not half as convenient. If you create multiple profiles, you can start firefox instances like so, and have multiple windows with different extensions, cookies, etc just like Chrome: $ firefox -P gaccount1 $ firefox -P gaccount2
      - unicornporn 15y ago
        http://br.mozdev.org/multifox/ http://br.mozdev.org/multifox/
  - drivebyacct2 15y ago
    No offense, but I simply don't understand the rage at Google for this issue. Are you telling me that switching between Live IDs is magically easier (it's not, it's amazingly easy to be "logged in" to a Live site without a logout button, especially when you mixed an XBL account in there). It's just that Google is the one site large enough to have users that NEED multiple accounts and have reasons to switch between them. You're arguing against the cookie model and the fact that modern browsers are still complete shit at managing an identity and related cookies. (edit)Rambling here, with the new Cookie API in Chrome, would it not be possible to switch between profiles quickly using an extension? I understand the frustation is that we want to have one tab/window with one account and one with another, but this solution could surely mitigate some use cases. Also, I hope my comments aren't interpreted the wrong way. I just started a new project with a new team today with a new centralized gmail account. This means coordinating between my account and the central account and between those two accounts and other team members. I understand the frustration, I just don't know if rage at Google is the most appropriate direction of attention.
    - mtogo 15y ago
      The fact is that Apps necessitates multiple accounts. If you want to receive email at both example.com and ycombinator.com, you can either pay $50 a month or use two accounts.
      - adamzochowski 15y ago
        I don't understand the problem. There are two ways that I know to handle this. 1) on secondary account setup imap/pop3 access. Setup primary account to read that. Grant access for primary account to use secondary email address (allows to change the from email) 2) in the app settings of your second domain, setup mailing list that has your primary email as the only destination. Enable the mailing list to accept any incoming email. Grant access for primary account to use secondary email address (allows to change the from email) There are probably more ways, I know of few people that have 5 email addresses all setup to route through one core account.
    - tedunangst 15y ago
  - benmccann 15y ago
    I use Chrome for my personal account and FireFox for my work account. It's way to hard to use a single browser with multiple accounts.
  - sjs382 15y ago
    Likewise. I have Chrome, Chrome Canary, Chrome Incognito, Chrome Canary Incognito open at all times. Just so I can use multi accounts on Google products. I wish they could make this simple.
- Adaptive 15y ago
  Agree. This is very disappointing. Google Apps appeals to two distinct groups: IT teams and savvy, generally leading-edge users that want to maintain services under their own domain. I've had a google apps account since the beginning and it's amazing to me that despite the number of people that fall into that early adopter category on google apps, they have failed repeatedly at rolling out services to apps users.
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  It's almost like they've been working for quite some time to close the gap between Google Accounts and Google Apps Accounts. Insane! Like, probably 80% of their stuff works transparently with either type of account. It kinda seems to stand to reason that their HUGE project that integrates most Google services into it and is the new "main way" of accessing your account... may not have had the attention to make it fully compatible with a small subset of their users. That, and it definitely warrants a post containing 2 explicatives being the top comment on this post? (edit: I'm not upset with the language, I'm just surprised. I'm used to the shorter more explicative posts being discouraged. I, myself, don't mind, like I said, just surprised.)
  - knowtheory 15y ago
    Except that it's not just their most recent massive service. The constellation of services and notifiers and tools that they produce, none of them, whether they are new releases (in which one would think they would be aware of the existing difficulties apps users have) or older systems with more storied release histories, give google apps users a fair shake. On top of that their migration plans for moving from apps accounts to full accounts are unclear and continually moving targets. It really is awful. And who gives a fuck how much swearing a post has? :P
    - drivebyacct2 15y ago
      I don't disagree with your statements. I guess I just reacted by not using Google Apps and transitioning my users back away from it. While I do understand that that's not possible for businesses that have committed on a wider scale (and with less tech-savvy users), I guess I'm trying to remain optimistic that Google is sincere in their efforts to blur or eliminate the distinction between Google "proper" accounts and Google Apps accounts.
- yesimahuman 15y ago
  Not just that, but I find when I switch back and forth from Apps to non-Apps accounts, I get randomly kicked off the one I just signed into. Often mid-email.
- Kylekramer 15y ago
  I am constantly surprised that people are constantly surprised by this. I get that people think they should recieve better service because they pay. But remember what you are paying for: the business verison of Google's apps. So color me unshocked that features arrive much slower. Especially social networking features.
  - revorad 15y ago
    Regarding the "business" services, my app randomly disappeared from the Chrome Web Store. I found out only because I periodically check how it's doing. It took me weeks of email tennis to get it to appear again, just in one regional store. But I still couldn't even log on to my dashboard because Google conveniently forgot that I had already paid them the verification fee. The fee was negligible, but what I don't understand is how can they have my app listed but claim I'm not verified, when that is a prerequisite? This is not a social networking feature. This directly affects my business, but Google couldn't care less. And it points to real incompetence, which is not surprising given their history of almost non-existent customer service, but still disappointing considering this is probably a software issue.
- revorad 15y ago
  Google's account management is a total joke. I wish they focused on improving their core products and learnt to care for their customers instead of messing about with bloody +1 buttons.
- doomlaser 15y ago
  Log out of both accounts, and then login to your gmail/google+ account first, then google apps accounts. This'll set the cookie identifier that google uses in its urls (/u/0/) to be your g+. Then you'll still be able to use all the google+ stuff without switching accounts, as well as remaining logged into google apps (mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com etc)
- mikk0j 15y ago
  This is true, but not even close to being the smallest of problems. Due to the Apps / Accounts forced migration, I have now lost access to Reader (happened 4 months ago), YouTube (last week) and AdWords (two months ago). The latter is the worst - the AdWords ads keep running with my credit card on file, but I can't access the account. That must be illegal, taking your customer's payment info hostage. The AdWords support team has not answered any of the 5 emails I have sent them.
bjtitus 15y ago
Would much prefer to see it added inside of the address bar rather than as a button.
orijing 15y ago
> all of the pages and URLs you visit will be sent to Google in order to retrieve +1 information. This is just another part of their plan to index the web, and get more signals for their web index building, just like the Google Toolbars that tracked everything you did on the web.
- Wilya 15y ago
  That doesn't really change the current situation. They own the browser, after all. And I'm pretty sure they already get part of the page via things like integrated page language detection for translation. This is a bit more precise, but not a radical change, I guess.
mtogo 15y ago
> In addition to the practices described in the Google +1 Button Privacy Policy, by installing this extension, all of the pages and URLs you visit will be sent to Google in order to retrieve +1 information. Oh yes, how reasonable.

45 points by schlichtm 15y ago

Imagine if Facebook made their own browser and offered an extension to “Like” any page on the web through it — same idea... Wouldn't the same idea be Facebook releasing a Chrome extension for their "Like" button...? Just sayin'.

oldstrangers 15y ago
Well I suppose the assumption is that the +1 button will eventually be baked into Chrome by default. And Android...

knowtheory 15y ago

Once again, totally fucking useless if you use a google apps account as your primary account. It's unbelievable to me how freaking useless all of google's shit is with regard to this problem. You can use multiple accounts, but none of their software, including their browser is multi-account aware.

citricsquid 15y ago
totally fucking useless doesn't even begin to describe my experience with multiple google apps and gmail accounts. I currently have 3 browsers running and a copy of google in "incognito mode" just so I can have all my email, docs and Youtube accessible without having to switch accounts constantly. Drives me damn near crazy.
- rachelbythebay 15y ago
  This went around a few months ago: http://giveupandusemultiplebrowsers.com/ http://giveupandusemultiplebrowsers.com/ It's still valid.
- callahad 15y ago
  If you like Chrome, try enabling "Multiple Profiles" in about:flags, then add a few profiles in chrome://settings/personal Each profile is isolated from the others in much the same way that Incognito and normal Chrome sessions are isolated. It's pretty handy.
  - mtogo 15y ago
    Firefox has a similar feature but it's not half as convenient. If you create multiple profiles, you can start firefox instances like so, and have multiple windows with different extensions, cookies, etc just like Chrome: $ firefox -P gaccount1 $ firefox -P gaccount2
    - unicornporn 15y ago
      http://br.mozdev.org/multifox/ http://br.mozdev.org/multifox/
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  No offense, but I simply don't understand the rage at Google for this issue. Are you telling me that switching between Live IDs is magically easier (it's not, it's amazingly easy to be "logged in" to a Live site without a logout button, especially when you mixed an XBL account in there). It's just that Google is the one site large enough to have users that NEED multiple accounts and have reasons to switch between them. You're arguing against the cookie model and the fact that modern browsers are still complete shit at managing an identity and related cookies. (edit)Rambling here, with the new Cookie API in Chrome, would it not be possible to switch between profiles quickly using an extension? I understand the frustation is that we want to have one tab/window with one account and one with another, but this solution could surely mitigate some use cases. Also, I hope my comments aren't interpreted the wrong way. I just started a new project with a new team today with a new centralized gmail account. This means coordinating between my account and the central account and between those two accounts and other team members. I understand the frustration, I just don't know if rage at Google is the most appropriate direction of attention.
  - mtogo 15y ago
    The fact is that Apps necessitates multiple accounts. If you want to receive email at both example.com and ycombinator.com, you can either pay $50 a month or use two accounts.
    - adamzochowski 15y ago
      I don't understand the problem. There are two ways that I know to handle this. 1) on secondary account setup imap/pop3 access. Setup primary account to read that. Grant access for primary account to use secondary email address (allows to change the from email) 2) in the app settings of your second domain, setup mailing list that has your primary email as the only destination. Enable the mailing list to accept any incoming email. Grant access for primary account to use secondary email address (allows to change the from email) There are probably more ways, I know of few people that have 5 email addresses all setup to route through one core account.
  - tedunangst 15y ago
- benmccann 15y ago
  I use Chrome for my personal account and FireFox for my work account. It's way to hard to use a single browser with multiple accounts.
- sjs382 15y ago
  Likewise. I have Chrome, Chrome Canary, Chrome Incognito, Chrome Canary Incognito open at all times. Just so I can use multi accounts on Google products. I wish they could make this simple.
Adaptive 15y ago
Agree. This is very disappointing. Google Apps appeals to two distinct groups: IT teams and savvy, generally leading-edge users that want to maintain services under their own domain. I've had a google apps account since the beginning and it's amazing to me that despite the number of people that fall into that early adopter category on google apps, they have failed repeatedly at rolling out services to apps users.
drivebyacct2 15y ago
It's almost like they've been working for quite some time to close the gap between Google Accounts and Google Apps Accounts. Insane! Like, probably 80% of their stuff works transparently with either type of account. It kinda seems to stand to reason that their HUGE project that integrates most Google services into it and is the new "main way" of accessing your account... may not have had the attention to make it fully compatible with a small subset of their users. That, and it definitely warrants a post containing 2 explicatives being the top comment on this post? (edit: I'm not upset with the language, I'm just surprised. I'm used to the shorter more explicative posts being discouraged. I, myself, don't mind, like I said, just surprised.)
- knowtheory 15y ago
  Except that it's not just their most recent massive service. The constellation of services and notifiers and tools that they produce, none of them, whether they are new releases (in which one would think they would be aware of the existing difficulties apps users have) or older systems with more storied release histories, give google apps users a fair shake. On top of that their migration plans for moving from apps accounts to full accounts are unclear and continually moving targets. It really is awful. And who gives a fuck how much swearing a post has? :P
  - drivebyacct2 15y ago
    I don't disagree with your statements. I guess I just reacted by not using Google Apps and transitioning my users back away from it. While I do understand that that's not possible for businesses that have committed on a wider scale (and with less tech-savvy users), I guess I'm trying to remain optimistic that Google is sincere in their efforts to blur or eliminate the distinction between Google "proper" accounts and Google Apps accounts.
yesimahuman 15y ago
Not just that, but I find when I switch back and forth from Apps to non-Apps accounts, I get randomly kicked off the one I just signed into. Often mid-email.
Kylekramer 15y ago
I am constantly surprised that people are constantly surprised by this. I get that people think they should recieve better service because they pay. But remember what you are paying for: the business verison of Google's apps. So color me unshocked that features arrive much slower. Especially social networking features.
- revorad 15y ago
  Regarding the "business" services, my app randomly disappeared from the Chrome Web Store. I found out only because I periodically check how it's doing. It took me weeks of email tennis to get it to appear again, just in one regional store. But I still couldn't even log on to my dashboard because Google conveniently forgot that I had already paid them the verification fee. The fee was negligible, but what I don't understand is how can they have my app listed but claim I'm not verified, when that is a prerequisite? This is not a social networking feature. This directly affects my business, but Google couldn't care less. And it points to real incompetence, which is not surprising given their history of almost non-existent customer service, but still disappointing considering this is probably a software issue.
revorad 15y ago
Google's account management is a total joke. I wish they focused on improving their core products and learnt to care for their customers instead of messing about with bloody +1 buttons.
doomlaser 15y ago
Log out of both accounts, and then login to your gmail/google+ account first, then google apps accounts. This'll set the cookie identifier that google uses in its urls (/u/0/) to be your g+. Then you'll still be able to use all the google+ stuff without switching accounts, as well as remaining logged into google apps (mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com etc)
mikk0j 15y ago
This is true, but not even close to being the smallest of problems. Due to the Apps / Accounts forced migration, I have now lost access to Reader (happened 4 months ago), YouTube (last week) and AdWords (two months ago). The latter is the worst - the AdWords ads keep running with my credit card on file, but I can't access the account. That must be illegal, taking your customer's payment info hostage. The AdWords support team has not answered any of the 5 emails I have sent them.

bjtitus 15y ago

Would much prefer to see it added inside of the address bar rather than as a button.

orijing 15y ago

> all of the pages and URLs you visit will be sent to Google in order to retrieve +1 information. This is just another part of their plan to index the web, and get more signals for their web index building, just like the Google Toolbars that tracked everything you did on the web.

Wilya 15y ago
That doesn't really change the current situation. They own the browser, after all. And I'm pretty sure they already get part of the page via things like integrated page language detection for translation. This is a bit more precise, but not a radical change, I guess.

mtogo 15y ago

> In addition to the practices described in the Google +1 Button Privacy Policy, by installing this extension, all of the pages and URLs you visit will be sent to Google in order to retrieve +1 information. Oh yes, how reasonable.