10 ms·

New Google Accounts Require Gmail and Google+

127 points by lomegor 15y ago

bengebre 15y ago
The "Delete profile and Google+ features" link in the Google "Account Overview" has also been removed, so it looks like you can no longer get rid of your Google+ account after the fact as outlined here: http://www.troublefixers.com/how-to-delete-google-plus-or-google-account-safely-without-deleting-google-or-gmail-account/ http://www.troublefixers.com/how-to-delete-google-plus-or-go...
- pilif 15y ago
  I still see the link - it moved from the G+ setting to the Google Account settings.
  - bengebre 15y ago
    I see the title "Delete profile and Google+ features" but no link to an actual action when I visit here: https://www.google.com/settings/general https://www.google.com/settings/general My guess is it's going away for everyone, but I guess that's speculation.
- natdog 15y ago
  Of course you can get rid of your Google+ account, just put a fake name on there.
pilif 15y ago
I'd say that by doing this they will gain more users to G+ than they will not gain for Gmail or other services due to concerns about G+. On the other hand, being able to sign up with an arbitrary email address has always lead to issues once/if you switch to Google Apps and intend to share local parts. Google has no obligation to provide G+/GMail-less accounts and I'm sure there is a lot of technical and business reasons for coupling them. As it's their service, that's what we get.
- lomegor 15y ago
  That's true, but I just feel that's not the Google's way of doing things. I mean, they never forced you to use their other products in the past, so this comes as a surprise to me. Of course, it's their company they can do whatever they want. That doesn't mean we can't judge them.
stevengg 15y ago
Does this mean you can't make throwaway email addresses anymore not linked to your real name since google doesn't allow alias on G+ you always be at risk of deletion?
- yanw 15y ago
  They started allowing aliases on G+.
  - jdp23 15y ago
    You've said this several times, but it's not true. Google hasn't changed their policy; and they still ban some users for violating it.
- tonfa 15y ago
  The real name suspension only affects the G+ profile (not gmail).
dexen 15y ago
It's somewhat troubling to me due to the `real name' requirement of Google+. Seems I can't create a semi-anonymous email at gmail anymore?
- vladd 15y ago
  There are implications for business accounts too: if you need a real name you'll no longer be able to sign up in Adwords with something like admin@<company-domain> (and changing the company's Adwords to another person becomes a headache).
  - yanw 15y ago
    For Google Apps G+ is an opt-in service.
- joshuahedlund 15y ago
  I can see why Google would want to clamp down on semi-anonymous gmail accounts. I'm sure many of us have used them for convenient purposes with no ill intent, myself included, but we all know that they are often used for spamming. Overall I'm OK with this as long as they don't remove the lesser-known feature of creating infinite aliases with a plus sign (myemail@gmail.com -> mymail+whatever@gmail.com). It doesn't work everywhere, and it doesn't solve all of the needs for using semi-anonymous emails, but it often solves a lot of them. Still, I won't be surprised if demand starts rising for other free anonymous mail services. Google's UI presents a nice barrier to entry, though (of course, others exist but none are as popular right now).
  - nolok 15y ago
    Use punctuation, it works pretty much everywhere mymail@gmail.com my.mail@gmail.com m.y.m.a.i.l@gmail.com These all redirect to the same mailbox on gmail
    - balac 15y ago
      True, but its a lot harder to remember once you have a few variations.
monsterix 15y ago
I had a great impression about Gmail until 2009 but now it seems to fade. The amount of spam has gone up, interface is bloated as if it were an excel sheet and, almost constant nagging to force me use some random feature that they think is cool is ... well. There is an old adage, Google don't fix it if it ain't broken. At least don't break it.
technoslut 15y ago
I'm rather disturbed by these troubling trends that Google has taken. I'm not interested in G+ nor do I want to be involved in the battle between Google and Facebook for the greater number of users. I enjoy using some of their services but it's getting to the point where I'd rather pay for email and look for an alternative RSS solution. At some point Google is going to be investigated for this. Like MS, they'll probably get away with this in the US because Google is US based and they let businesses get away with anything, but the EU will hammer them.
- melling 15y ago
  Are you disturbed my Microsoft completely dominating the desktop? 90% market share for a decade and a half. Microsoft essentially beat the US govt. Nothing significant happened. By the time restrictions were imposed, the competition was dead. In Google's case, it's highly doubtful that they will ever dominate social. The barriers to entry for the online world are way too low.
  - hyperbovine 15y ago
    And lo and behold, Apple came along and completely out-innovated MS and is utterly kicking their ass on all fronts. No government intervention required.
    - melling 15y ago
      You call Apple going from 5% market share to 10% kicking Microsoft's butt? Apple has done cool stuff but it really wasn't at the expense of Microsoft.
      - epo 15y ago
        Looking at it from a non-MS fanboy perspective. Apple has repeatedly out-flanked MS, reinvented a couple of major industries and has hugely successful product lines beyond desktop PC software, so yes, Apple has been kicking MS's arse for quite a while now.
hamidpalo 15y ago
Wasn't there a big huge DOJ case a while back about a company using one monopoly to try and create another? I forget.
luckystarr 15y ago
Google is the new Yahoo! now.
toddsundsted 15y ago
I remember AltaVista's decline into a "portal" -- to the point where it was hard to spot the search box on their home page, and the honest results in the "results" -- and Google's arrival on the scene with super-clean, relevant search. I feel like history is repeating itself _in a fashion_. Who are the rising stars in general-purpose web search?
- nolok 15y ago
  You have an obvious button on the top right to disable all personalized results on google. If you want to make this permanent, go in your search options and select "non-personalized result" as the default; you then get the same results as if you were not connected. I don't like the trend were they are going, but you're comparing apples and oranges here.
  - marshray 15y ago
    I hadn't thought of it this way before, but it sure smacks of Lycos/Yahoo/Netscape portalization of Google to me.
- saddino 15y ago
  "Who are the rising stars in general-purpose web search?" duckduckgo.com
  - Drbble 15y ago
    DDG is far from solving the problem of generating useful results. It is mostly just wikipedia plus some chaff.
spodek 15y ago
I predict Google and Facebook, successful as they are, will provide the greatest motivation for the growth of Diaspora. People in charge of so much centralized data will be unable to resist using it. They are in an arms race. Diaspora is small now, but the motivation to use it will only keep growing.
- runn1ng 15y ago
  I have a problem with Diaspora that it doesn't add anything useful to the concept of social network. For an end user, it's basically Facebook/Google+, but worse; it doesn't really try to engage user. When I register as a new user on Facebook or Google+, it is constantly trying to engage me, trying to somehow connect me with new people. If I log in to JoinDiaspora, I just stare at empty screen and my two inactive Diaspora friends, which is exactly what I saw 1 year ago when I tried it the first time. There are no user groups, no way to actually DO ANYTHING on the site. The fact that the main joindiaspora hub it's still invite-based doesn't help things. Edit: Oh, I just realized I can search for tags on joindiaspora. Only that it does take about 30 seconds for the results to really start showing; first, I see just empty screen. I realize that making social network is hard, but diaspora to me still looks like very early alpha.
- jrockway 15y ago
  To the average user, having all the data in one place is very useful. Imagine a world where you type your friend's name into Google, and you see the emails you've sent her, photos you've taken, relevant Google+ posts and shared links, and so on. Giving all your data to Google means you get to see it all on one search results page. That's pretty convenient. (Google is also very very serious about protecting your data. Don't let Facebook's lax privacy let you think Google does the same thing. The only entity you have to fear is the government, and that's true of any internet service provider.)
  - eliasmacpherson 15y ago
    "GCreep: Google Engineer Stalked Teens, Spied on Chats (Updated)" http://gawker.com/5637234/ http://gawker.com/5637234/ Not wholly sure what the outcome of the above was, but you could also fear google's employees if you were so inclined. Or anyone that had undue/inappropriate access to/sway with google's employees. They are only many thousands of humans after all.
joshuahedlund 15y ago
Until now, creating a Google account was quite simple. You don't usually see websites boasting that their processes used to be simpler.
- mdwrigh2 15y ago
  It isn't "their" process, this is an unofficial news site that reports on Google, not Google themselves.
keturn 15y ago
Bah. I've been happily using Google services with a non-Google email for years now, but when I created a gmail account for that ID, all my notifications from all google products (e.g. google calendar notifications, notifications from other Google products like Google Code) suddenly started going to the gmail mailbox instead of the address they'd been going to all along. Fortunately I was able to delete the gmail account to reverse this, but it was relatively difficult to find the "turn off gmail" button. And if all new accounts get gmail, they may stop letting you turn off gmail at all.
RexRollman 15y ago
I am not a fan of this move. It makes me feel like I did when Microsoft starting including Internet Explorer in Windows, but instead of forced middleware bundling, we have forced service bundling.
- Karunamon 15y ago
  You were bothered when an operating system started including an internet browser? That's rather silly, don't you think?
  - Half_a_Bee 15y ago
    You have to understand that all those years ago, Microsoft occupied the position Google does now - if they did or announced anything at all, it was obviously sinister in the eyes of a lot of geeks.
  - Drbble 15y ago
    A broken browser that intentionally broke the Internet.
    - Karunamon 15y ago
      It was the mid 90's, nobody gave a flip about standards (that includes the other competitors out at the time..), and there's really no good reason for an OS for an internet connected world not to include a web browser.
badclient 15y ago
Google's doing a great job of fooling the media with the G+ hype. I just hope they keep themselves in check internally and know that G+, as it stands, is a shit product with little adoption once you take away the forced adoption. If they don't care about it and just want to pump up their signup numbers, heck just make every google.com visitor a G+ member automatically. Oh wait, they are beginning to do just that...
phunel 15y ago
I've been struggling with the tradeoffs in keeping Google as my email (among other things) provider. I own a few VPS's and have plenty of hardware that could serve as a private server. What has kept me from hosting my email up to this point is the fear of being inadvertently blacklisted by something like Spamhaus, downtime from Comcast (my ISP) making service intermittent, and generally having the email server management take over my life. In short, the same issues that affect many here by evidence of the recent chart of Y Combinator companies' hosting decisions (http://jpf.github.com/domain-profiler/ycombinator.html?2011 http://jpf.github.com/domain-profiler/ycombinator.html?2011). I could host my own email on my VPS, but going through the trouble of that - it seems to make sense to just go ahead and host on a box I fully control. To this point I admit I have had no issues with gmail or Google apps, both of which I use. But the landscape seems to be changing and I'm curious if anyone is considering migrating to their own hardware and what tools, etc. they are employing to make that process easily manageable as well as effective. I use email for sensitive business discussions, but the security required is tempered by the obvious fact that if the email doesn't get there, it's less than worthless. I do have PGP setup, and I thought that this would be a good tradeoff while using a third party provider - but it is nearly impossible to keep partners and clients active in using it, if they use it at all. The concept of the Freedombox (freedomboxfoundation.org) seems interesting, but academic at this point. Anyone running their personal email servers care to comment on the overhead? Would a simple Postfix, Dovecot, Roundcube install with Spamassassin suffice? What are the pitfalls? Not worth the tradeoff of using Google Apps? I'm thinking about keeping my websites on a VPS and using a MX record to point to a private, dedicated email server I keep in my house or other private property. Anyone running a similar setup?
- jrockway 15y ago
  So, if you want to relay mail out of your MX, it's going to be flaky from a DSL or cable line. The reason is because much of the email coming out of those IP ranges is virus-sent spam, many mail servers block those IP ranges. (ISPs are doing a pretty good job filtering port 25 these days. The only really annoying spam I get is from Sprint's mobile network. I would block those IP ranges, but I want to be able to relay mail from my Sprint mobile phone :) I run a mail server on my Linode and have never had trouble sending mail. It's easy to see if you're on a blacklist and take corrective action, though I've never had to do this. I recently switched from Postfix to Exim4 and like it a lot more. The spam checking is much better integrated and lets you reject messages at DATA time with full spam information, so real messages that are auto-rejected at least bounce with an informative message. Finally, if you don't like delayed mail, get a backup MX. It's very easy to set up for your friends that run their own primary MX, and you can return the favor. (I buy a backup MX service, but run backup MX for people that have asked.)
dustingetz 15y ago
Old create-account link requires you already have a non-gmail email address. You can't create a gmail account from scratch without the new form (with G+).
mijnpc 15y ago
Another desperate attempt to get more G+ users :)
- gkka 15y ago
  I agree
Aloisius 15y ago
Google is going to do whatever it takes to drive people from that competing advertising network known as Facebook. Have you done a search for "Facebook" on Google recently? Notice the gigantic ad for Google+ on the right? http://img576.imageshack.us/img576/199/screenshot20120120at110.png http://img576.imageshack.us/img576/199/screenshot20120120at1... If that isn't anti-competitive, I don't know what is. If I had a competing service, I couldn't advertise for "facebook" on Google, but Google can stick a gigantic ad for their competing service there?
willy1234x1 15y ago
I honestly can't agree with any of the top comments, saying you're "disturbed" or just being upset with this move is rather pointless. Google stated early in the life of Google+ that Google+ is Google and now they're following through. There is no surprise here or reason to be upset. Would you really rather maintain a separate login for all of Google's services? That's inconvenient and makes no sense for one company. It's a smart move on Google's part, the complaints are really unfounded, previously it was Google is too disjointed, now that they're making moves to rectify that people still complain.

127 points by lomegor 15y ago

The "Delete profile and Google+ features" link in the Google "Account Overview" has also been removed, so it looks like you can no longer get rid of your Google+ account after the fact as outlined here: http://www.troublefixers.com/how-to-delete-google-plus-or-google-account-safely-without-deleting-google-or-gmail-account/ http://www.troublefixers.com/how-to-delete-google-plus-or-go...

pilif 15y ago
I still see the link - it moved from the G+ setting to the Google Account settings.
- bengebre 15y ago
  I see the title "Delete profile and Google+ features" but no link to an actual action when I visit here: https://www.google.com/settings/general https://www.google.com/settings/general My guess is it's going away for everyone, but I guess that's speculation.
natdog 15y ago
Of course you can get rid of your Google+ account, just put a fake name on there.

pilif 15y ago

I'd say that by doing this they will gain more users to G+ than they will not gain for Gmail or other services due to concerns about G+. On the other hand, being able to sign up with an arbitrary email address has always lead to issues once/if you switch to Google Apps and intend to share local parts. Google has no obligation to provide G+/GMail-less accounts and I'm sure there is a lot of technical and business reasons for coupling them. As it's their service, that's what we get.

lomegor 15y ago
That's true, but I just feel that's not the Google's way of doing things. I mean, they never forced you to use their other products in the past, so this comes as a surprise to me. Of course, it's their company they can do whatever they want. That doesn't mean we can't judge them.

stevengg 15y ago

Does this mean you can't make throwaway email addresses anymore not linked to your real name since google doesn't allow alias on G+ you always be at risk of deletion?

yanw 15y ago
They started allowing aliases on G+.
- jdp23 15y ago
  You've said this several times, but it's not true. Google hasn't changed their policy; and they still ban some users for violating it.
tonfa 15y ago
The real name suspension only affects the G+ profile (not gmail).

dexen 15y ago

It's somewhat troubling to me due to the `real name' requirement of Google+. Seems I can't create a semi-anonymous email at gmail anymore?

vladd 15y ago
There are implications for business accounts too: if you need a real name you'll no longer be able to sign up in Adwords with something like admin@<company-domain> (and changing the company's Adwords to another person becomes a headache).
- yanw 15y ago
  For Google Apps G+ is an opt-in service.
joshuahedlund 15y ago
I can see why Google would want to clamp down on semi-anonymous gmail accounts. I'm sure many of us have used them for convenient purposes with no ill intent, myself included, but we all know that they are often used for spamming. Overall I'm OK with this as long as they don't remove the lesser-known feature of creating infinite aliases with a plus sign (myemail@gmail.com -> mymail+whatever@gmail.com). It doesn't work everywhere, and it doesn't solve all of the needs for using semi-anonymous emails, but it often solves a lot of them. Still, I won't be surprised if demand starts rising for other free anonymous mail services. Google's UI presents a nice barrier to entry, though (of course, others exist but none are as popular right now).
- nolok 15y ago
  Use punctuation, it works pretty much everywhere mymail@gmail.com my.mail@gmail.com m.y.m.a.i.l@gmail.com These all redirect to the same mailbox on gmail
  - balac 15y ago
    True, but its a lot harder to remember once you have a few variations.

monsterix 15y ago

I had a great impression about Gmail until 2009 but now it seems to fade. The amount of spam has gone up, interface is bloated as if it were an excel sheet and, almost constant nagging to force me use some random feature that they think is cool is ... well. There is an old adage, Google don't fix it if it ain't broken. At least don't break it.

technoslut 15y ago

I'm rather disturbed by these troubling trends that Google has taken. I'm not interested in G+ nor do I want to be involved in the battle between Google and Facebook for the greater number of users. I enjoy using some of their services but it's getting to the point where I'd rather pay for email and look for an alternative RSS solution. At some point Google is going to be investigated for this. Like MS, they'll probably get away with this in the US because Google is US based and they let businesses get away with anything, but the EU will hammer them.

melling 15y ago
Are you disturbed my Microsoft completely dominating the desktop? 90% market share for a decade and a half. Microsoft essentially beat the US govt. Nothing significant happened. By the time restrictions were imposed, the competition was dead. In Google's case, it's highly doubtful that they will ever dominate social. The barriers to entry for the online world are way too low.
- hyperbovine 15y ago
  And lo and behold, Apple came along and completely out-innovated MS and is utterly kicking their ass on all fronts. No government intervention required.
  - melling 15y ago
    You call Apple going from 5% market share to 10% kicking Microsoft's butt? Apple has done cool stuff but it really wasn't at the expense of Microsoft.
    - epo 15y ago
      Looking at it from a non-MS fanboy perspective. Apple has repeatedly out-flanked MS, reinvented a couple of major industries and has hugely successful product lines beyond desktop PC software, so yes, Apple has been kicking MS's arse for quite a while now.

hamidpalo 15y ago

Wasn't there a big huge DOJ case a while back about a company using one monopoly to try and create another? I forget.

luckystarr 15y ago

Google is the new Yahoo! now.

toddsundsted 15y ago

I remember AltaVista's decline into a "portal" -- to the point where it was hard to spot the search box on their home page, and the honest results in the "results" -- and Google's arrival on the scene with super-clean, relevant search. I feel like history is repeating itself _in a fashion_. Who are the rising stars in general-purpose web search?

nolok 15y ago
You have an obvious button on the top right to disable all personalized results on google. If you want to make this permanent, go in your search options and select "non-personalized result" as the default; you then get the same results as if you were not connected. I don't like the trend were they are going, but you're comparing apples and oranges here.
- marshray 15y ago
  I hadn't thought of it this way before, but it sure smacks of Lycos/Yahoo/Netscape portalization of Google to me.
saddino 15y ago
"Who are the rising stars in general-purpose web search?" duckduckgo.com
- Drbble 15y ago
  DDG is far from solving the problem of generating useful results. It is mostly just wikipedia plus some chaff.

spodek 15y ago

I predict Google and Facebook, successful as they are, will provide the greatest motivation for the growth of Diaspora. People in charge of so much centralized data will be unable to resist using it. They are in an arms race. Diaspora is small now, but the motivation to use it will only keep growing.

runn1ng 15y ago
I have a problem with Diaspora that it doesn't add anything useful to the concept of social network. For an end user, it's basically Facebook/Google+, but worse; it doesn't really try to engage user. When I register as a new user on Facebook or Google+, it is constantly trying to engage me, trying to somehow connect me with new people. If I log in to JoinDiaspora, I just stare at empty screen and my two inactive Diaspora friends, which is exactly what I saw 1 year ago when I tried it the first time. There are no user groups, no way to actually DO ANYTHING on the site. The fact that the main joindiaspora hub it's still invite-based doesn't help things. Edit: Oh, I just realized I can search for tags on joindiaspora. Only that it does take about 30 seconds for the results to really start showing; first, I see just empty screen. I realize that making social network is hard, but diaspora to me still looks like very early alpha.
jrockway 15y ago
To the average user, having all the data in one place is very useful. Imagine a world where you type your friend's name into Google, and you see the emails you've sent her, photos you've taken, relevant Google+ posts and shared links, and so on. Giving all your data to Google means you get to see it all on one search results page. That's pretty convenient. (Google is also very very serious about protecting your data. Don't let Facebook's lax privacy let you think Google does the same thing. The only entity you have to fear is the government, and that's true of any internet service provider.)
- eliasmacpherson 15y ago
  "GCreep: Google Engineer Stalked Teens, Spied on Chats (Updated)" http://gawker.com/5637234/ http://gawker.com/5637234/ Not wholly sure what the outcome of the above was, but you could also fear google's employees if you were so inclined. Or anyone that had undue/inappropriate access to/sway with google's employees. They are only many thousands of humans after all.

joshuahedlund 15y ago

Until now, creating a Google account was quite simple. You don't usually see websites boasting that their processes used to be simpler.

mdwrigh2 15y ago
It isn't "their" process, this is an unofficial news site that reports on Google, not Google themselves.

keturn 15y ago

Bah. I've been happily using Google services with a non-Google email for years now, but when I created a gmail account for that ID, all my notifications from all google products (e.g. google calendar notifications, notifications from other Google products like Google Code) suddenly started going to the gmail mailbox instead of the address they'd been going to all along. Fortunately I was able to delete the gmail account to reverse this, but it was relatively difficult to find the "turn off gmail" button. And if all new accounts get gmail, they may stop letting you turn off gmail at all.

RexRollman 15y ago

I am not a fan of this move. It makes me feel like I did when Microsoft starting including Internet Explorer in Windows, but instead of forced middleware bundling, we have forced service bundling.

Karunamon 15y ago
You were bothered when an operating system started including an internet browser? That's rather silly, don't you think?
- Half_a_Bee 15y ago
  You have to understand that all those years ago, Microsoft occupied the position Google does now - if they did or announced anything at all, it was obviously sinister in the eyes of a lot of geeks.
- Drbble 15y ago
  A broken browser that intentionally broke the Internet.
  - Karunamon 15y ago
    It was the mid 90's, nobody gave a flip about standards (that includes the other competitors out at the time..), and there's really no good reason for an OS for an internet connected world not to include a web browser.

badclient 15y ago

Google's doing a great job of fooling the media with the G+ hype. I just hope they keep themselves in check internally and know that G+, as it stands, is a shit product with little adoption once you take away the forced adoption. If they don't care about it and just want to pump up their signup numbers, heck just make every google.com visitor a G+ member automatically. Oh wait, they are beginning to do just that...

phunel 15y ago

I've been struggling with the tradeoffs in keeping Google as my email (among other things) provider. I own a few VPS's and have plenty of hardware that could serve as a private server. What has kept me from hosting my email up to this point is the fear of being inadvertently blacklisted by something like Spamhaus, downtime from Comcast (my ISP) making service intermittent, and generally having the email server management take over my life. In short, the same issues that affect many here by evidence of the recent chart of Y Combinator companies' hosting decisions (http://jpf.github.com/domain-profiler/ycombinator.html?2011 http://jpf.github.com/domain-profiler/ycombinator.html?2011). I could host my own email on my VPS, but going through the trouble of that - it seems to make sense to just go ahead and host on a box I fully control. To this point I admit I have had no issues with gmail or Google apps, both of which I use. But the landscape seems to be changing and I'm curious if anyone is considering migrating to their own hardware and what tools, etc. they are employing to make that process easily manageable as well as effective. I use email for sensitive business discussions, but the security required is tempered by the obvious fact that if the email doesn't get there, it's less than worthless. I do have PGP setup, and I thought that this would be a good tradeoff while using a third party provider - but it is nearly impossible to keep partners and clients active in using it, if they use it at all. The concept of the Freedombox (freedomboxfoundation.org) seems interesting, but academic at this point. Anyone running their personal email servers care to comment on the overhead? Would a simple Postfix, Dovecot, Roundcube install with Spamassassin suffice? What are the pitfalls? Not worth the tradeoff of using Google Apps? I'm thinking about keeping my websites on a VPS and using a MX record to point to a private, dedicated email server I keep in my house or other private property. Anyone running a similar setup?

jrockway 15y ago
So, if you want to relay mail out of your MX, it's going to be flaky from a DSL or cable line. The reason is because much of the email coming out of those IP ranges is virus-sent spam, many mail servers block those IP ranges. (ISPs are doing a pretty good job filtering port 25 these days. The only really annoying spam I get is from Sprint's mobile network. I would block those IP ranges, but I want to be able to relay mail from my Sprint mobile phone :) I run a mail server on my Linode and have never had trouble sending mail. It's easy to see if you're on a blacklist and take corrective action, though I've never had to do this. I recently switched from Postfix to Exim4 and like it a lot more. The spam checking is much better integrated and lets you reject messages at DATA time with full spam information, so real messages that are auto-rejected at least bounce with an informative message. Finally, if you don't like delayed mail, get a backup MX. It's very easy to set up for your friends that run their own primary MX, and you can return the favor. (I buy a backup MX service, but run backup MX for people that have asked.)

dustingetz 15y ago

Old create-account link requires you already have a non-gmail email address. You can't create a gmail account from scratch without the new form (with G+).

mijnpc 15y ago

Another desperate attempt to get more G+ users :)

gkka 15y ago
I agree

Aloisius 15y ago

Google is going to do whatever it takes to drive people from that competing advertising network known as Facebook. Have you done a search for "Facebook" on Google recently? Notice the gigantic ad for Google+ on the right? http://img576.imageshack.us/img576/199/screenshot20120120at110.png http://img576.imageshack.us/img576/199/screenshot20120120at1... If that isn't anti-competitive, I don't know what is. If I had a competing service, I couldn't advertise for "facebook" on Google, but Google can stick a gigantic ad for their competing service there?

willy1234x1 15y ago

I honestly can't agree with any of the top comments, saying you're "disturbed" or just being upset with this move is rather pointless. Google stated early in the life of Google+ that Google+ is Google and now they're following through. There is no surprise here or reason to be upset. Would you really rather maintain a separate login for all of Google's services? That's inconvenient and makes no sense for one company. It's a smart move on Google's part, the complaints are really unfounded, previously it was Google is too disjointed, now that they're making moves to rectify that people still complain.