5 ms·

Google login now requires Google+ Account

56 points by svitcov 13y ago

Today, I went to login to a service that I signed up for many months ago using my Google account. In the past, clicking the 'sign in with Google' button with authenticate against my Google account and immediately log me in. However, today, I was prompted to create a Google+ profile with no other option. In other words, either I could create a Google+ account, or I could fuck off and never use the service again... Anyone else encountering this?

mknits 13y ago
It's time to dump Google. Alternatives: http://prism-break.org http://prism-break.org
eksith 13y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this was already in place for quite a while. Google has slowly been trying to move away form pseudonyms altogether and force Real Name policies like Facebook and things like YouTube, Blogger, Docs etc... were all slowly tied to one login system. This was a problem for me at first because I ended up with multiple accounts with no way to merge them together. But I believe they started with YouTube. I got an email saying they will deactivate/delete the account without verifying it (in this case "verify" was to create a Google account). I'm guessing this was only sent to accounts that hadn't uploaded any videos and mine had none at the time. A friend of mine also got the same email and she had no videos at the time either. It makes sense from their end to create one account, but adding Google+ seems to be a case of forced adoption. I've used multiple gmail addresses and they've all prompted me to create a new G+ account whenever I logged in just to check the inbox. If I wanted to add another service, I've been hit with some sort of conflict message. I think Google is able to tell when the same person uses multiple gmail addresses.
- svitcov 13y ago
  You may well be correct - I only noticed this now as most of the sites I frequent are not linked to my Google account. I know YouTube has been bugging me to put in a Real Name for a while, but I was never prompted before to create a fully fledged G+ profile (incl birth date, gender...)
- znowi 13y ago
  The scary part is that the coercive push for Real Name, single identity is advantageous to both private sector (Google, Facebook, etc) and government (NSA, etc). The former get better tracking and ad revenues. The latter improved surveillance and control of the public.
- nivla 13y ago
  ha this reminds me of the time I wanted to start a Youtube channel for a niche website I own. The crazy part, when signing up for Youtube, they also sign you up for Google+ and then force you to use your full name as the channel's name. That means, if your company name is ACME, your company's official Youtube channel is "Ron Burgundy". After failing to find a solution using Google Search, I decided to go with the next best option, change the real name to something sensible like "Acme YTVideos". BAM! A day later I receive a email from Google asking me to submit documents to verify that name or they will forcefully revert the channel's name to the Youtube username (ACMEVideos). LOL!
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
cromwellian 13y ago
What's with the Google Derangement Syndrome on HN recently? Any change in any Google service prompts the same "I'm taking all my toys and going home" response. Google used to have a separate profile system just like profiles.yahoo.com, and like Yahoo, having lots of disparate services with weak unification was a problem. G+ is that unifying profile layer. Is it really beyond the pale for a service to prompt you to enter some optional information about yourself? Yes, optional, as in, I have hundreds of followers on G+ with obviously bogus profiles. You don't have to use G+'s social feed, you don't have to friend anyone. I personally barely use Twitter or Facebook, mostly as single-sign-on to forums and other sites.
- Kurts 13y ago
  It's either an unhealthy obsession with Google or just old fashioned astroturf. I have a third theory that since Matt Cutts started commenting here, he brought the SEO types with him, and they don't much care for fluctuating algorithms. Anyways it's like no one cares about a standard util Google drops it, and somehow social becomes a sin when Google dabbles in it. Any Google bashing item or just expressed feigned outrage often shoots straight to the top of the main page.
- svitcov 13y ago
  If Google just wanted me to add a few relevant details to my primary account for some obvious useful purpose, details that would be kept private, I would happily oblige. However, this goes beyond that: Google is asking me to share information with no apparent application use (birth date?! gender???) to ANYONE who stumbles upon my G+ profile. I am not against unifying their services - in fact, this is what Google's basic authentication service should and could have done - but that is not the full extent of what is happening here, as far as I can tell.
  - tekacs 13y ago
    You don't actually have to share those details publicly if you don't want, to be fair. :/ Edit: for comparison and openness's sake, my profile: https://plus.google.com/116103902550362700148/about https://plus.google.com/116103902550362700148/about I have few qualms about sharing that, given that I know exactly what I've shared from there.
ams6110 13y ago
Note to web services businesses: give your users the option to have a local account, and give them an option to change from one 3rd party authenticator to another or to a local account.
- svitcov 13y ago
  This would be an ideal solution for this situation, but the problem remains: if I cannot authenticate via the 3rd party initially, the service has no way of knowing that I am actually the owner of the account. I am not sure what the working implementation of this looks like.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    Email verification with a newly generated local password. That's what Meetup did after I quit Facebook, and it was only 3-4 minutes of friction.
    - svitcov 13y ago
      Doh. Of course - that would have been easy and effective.
Grue3 13y ago
It's just so they can brag about having more "active users" than Twitter/Facebook/whatever.
- turing 13y ago
  That's not really fair. Google has been pretty good about defining activity on G+, much more so than either Twitter or Facebook. For example, they give individual numbers for total users visiting G+ on web/mobile, people using G+ features across all products (+1s, shares, comments), and total number of accounts.
  - frostmatthew 13y ago
    Source? (all I've ever heard is that Google considers someone an "active" G+ user if they have a G+ account and have used any Google product over the period in question)
    - turing 13y ago
      http://marketingland.com/google-hits-135-million-users-27904 http://marketingland.com/google-hits-135-million-users-27904 "According to new Google figures, Google+ now has 135 million active users, with 235 million active users when counting Google properties with Google+ features, and 500 million with Google+ enabled accounts."
      - frostmatthew 13y ago
        Thanks, that's interesting, I've only seen the "active users when counting Google properties with Google+ features" type numbers but nice to see a number (135m) for actually using G+ (probably higher now since that link is a few months old). Though I disagree with your [original] statement that Google is "defining activity" much more so than Facebook http://newsroom.fb.com/content/default.aspx?NewsAreaId=22 http://newsroom.fb.com/content/default.aspx?NewsAreaId=22
        13y ago
mieses 13y ago
Most of my family members will sooner dump Gmail than create a Google+ account.
- svitcov 13y ago
  I feel similarly. What I've been doing is just deleting my G+ account each time Google creates it, but if it becomes too much of an issue, I will be forced to switch. A real pity - I love gmail.
- cromwellian 13y ago
  Some would say having your family members avoid G+ is one of the primary benefits of G+. So instead of being barraged by a stream of photos of cousins and aunts you haven't seen in decades, or discussing family gossip, you get to engage in interesting conversations based on people with similar strong interests in particular topics. None of the people I follow on G+ are 'friends' with the exception of co-workers, instead, they are people who have very interesting things to say and who I like interacting with. Twitter would be a comparable use case, but it is too annoying to have long form stream discussions with followers like this.
  - frostmatthew 13y ago
    That doesn't sound like a very good "primary benefit" since Google's strategy is clearly to get as many people to use G+ as possible. Either a) they'll be successful and your G+ stream will be barraged by "photos of cousins and aunts" anyway or b) it's not successful and they pull the plug.
    - cromwellian 13y ago
      I don't think it's either-or. Even if they show up, G+ is by default, an asymmetric model. And G+ isn't just about the "stream". Google would have done something like G+ anyway to unify 40+ services. You might be right that they want more than a niche audience, on the other hand, Google does want to elevate the public square. Having a segmented by interest social network is a primary benefit. I come to HackerNews not because I'm friends with anyone here, but because I can interact with interesting people here. It's also why I go to G+ every. The level of dialogue on G+ is much better than Facebook on average, and the G+ communities are a lot better than Facebook pages.
dannyr 13y ago
Wow. This is the worst thing that could happen. Creating a Google+ account is such a travesty. It's such a waste of time and effort that could be better spent ranting on Hacker News. You should avoid everything Google. In principle, avoid any site that displays Google ads. By visiting ads, you're enabling Google to do all these evil things.
- pacomerh 13y ago
  Pff Evil things. Are you a saint now?
- EugeneOZ 13y ago
  I'll better avoid advices, based on blind hate.
isarang 13y ago
you should try google plus.. try communities and follow some googlers :)
plg 13y ago
the problem is that I may want a gmail account or I may want to use google hangouts to videochat with friends or I may want or need to use google calendar ... but I do NOT want to have a social network account. Google has made it so I have no choice.
- turing 13y ago
  I'm curious, why are you so vehemently opposed to having an account? You could very easily just not provide public profile information, never post, and never add anyone.
  - viraptor 13y ago
    Not sure about plg's reason, but I will avoid ever creating a plus account due to their strange policies for name verification. I'm not sure if it was improved lately or not, but many accounts were suspended previously when names didn't look English as far as I remember. Mine's definitely not an English one and it contains some non-ascii characters. Avoiding services which require plus accounts is much easier than dealing with potential account suspension.
  - plg 13y ago
    which begs the question ... why do I need a G+ account? It's not like I am asking google to implement some ability that has previously been not implemented... rather google has decided to eliminate a little piece of choice ... or freedom ... or whatever you want to call it ... for their users. Why? Because it's better for them. Which brings one back to something that has been posted many many times ... you are not the customer, you are the product. As long as you're OK with that, go for it... but my bet is that the vast majority of google's users have little concept of the issue of customer vs product. I'm just a little sad to see google take another step towards being a faceboob instead of taking one step away from them.
    - turing 13y ago
      "why do I need a G+ account?" "Because it's better for them." You've answered your own question. I also believe that the customer vs product issue is much more nuanced than most people portray it to be.
6d0debc071 13y ago
I used to review apps on the play store before it switched over to google+, and a number of the comment systems on websites I go to use it now so I don't comment on them anymore.
- nacs 13y ago
  I noticed this also. Why should I give my real name to post a review of a game I play on my Android for 5 minutes? Some of this forced Google plus integrations they're doing are just getting ridiculous.
Lagged2Death 13y ago
Yes, I was required to set up a Google+ account some time ago to re-log-in to YouTube or Picasa Web Albums - I don't remember which. The description of what was going on didn't make it clear to me that following the prescribed steps would create a Google+ account, but that was the effect. However, there was a saving grace, as far as I'm concerned. I was allowed to remove my real name from my Google account and use my ancient on-line alias instead. That's all I ever wanted.
- gaara87 13y ago
  I think its picasa
oellegaard 13y ago
This is super stupid. I have two business accounts and a personal account. Google now forced me to have 3 Google Plus profiles - and yes, I did discover exactly the same. I'm actively trying to replace Google with other things. They clearly lost their sense of quality.
packetslave 13y ago
Can I ask which service it was where this happened? It's possible this is a bug or an OAuth setting that's specific to the site in question. Feel free to email if you prefer (address in profile) edit: grammar
buro9 13y ago
Google Apps allows domain owners to disable G+. Will this option vanish?
gaara87 13y ago
Finally! Google as a company unifying their user login. Its about time. For privacy freaks like me: share only what you want. If you dont like this, you have the freedom to leave the service at anytime (along with deleting all your data also)
rekursiv 13y ago
I just tested this and was able to sign into userstyles.org just fine on a blank account with no G+ profile. Are you sure it wasn't an option that the third-party service was enabling?

56 points by svitcov 13y ago

mknits 13y ago

It's time to dump Google. Alternatives: http://prism-break.org http://prism-break.org

eksith 13y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this was already in place for quite a while. Google has slowly been trying to move away form pseudonyms altogether and force Real Name policies like Facebook and things like YouTube, Blogger, Docs etc... were all slowly tied to one login system. This was a problem for me at first because I ended up with multiple accounts with no way to merge them together. But I believe they started with YouTube. I got an email saying they will deactivate/delete the account without verifying it (in this case "verify" was to create a Google account). I'm guessing this was only sent to accounts that hadn't uploaded any videos and mine had none at the time. A friend of mine also got the same email and she had no videos at the time either. It makes sense from their end to create one account, but adding Google+ seems to be a case of forced adoption. I've used multiple gmail addresses and they've all prompted me to create a new G+ account whenever I logged in just to check the inbox. If I wanted to add another service, I've been hit with some sort of conflict message. I think Google is able to tell when the same person uses multiple gmail addresses.

svitcov 13y ago
You may well be correct - I only noticed this now as most of the sites I frequent are not linked to my Google account. I know YouTube has been bugging me to put in a Real Name for a while, but I was never prompted before to create a fully fledged G+ profile (incl birth date, gender...)
znowi 13y ago
The scary part is that the coercive push for Real Name, single identity is advantageous to both private sector (Google, Facebook, etc) and government (NSA, etc). The former get better tracking and ad revenues. The latter improved surveillance and control of the public.
nivla 13y ago
ha this reminds me of the time I wanted to start a Youtube channel for a niche website I own. The crazy part, when signing up for Youtube, they also sign you up for Google+ and then force you to use your full name as the channel's name. That means, if your company name is ACME, your company's official Youtube channel is "Ron Burgundy". After failing to find a solution using Google Search, I decided to go with the next best option, change the real name to something sensible like "Acme YTVideos". BAM! A day later I receive a email from Google asking me to submit documents to verify that name or they will forcefully revert the channel's name to the Youtube username (ACMEVideos). LOL!

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

cromwellian 13y ago

What's with the Google Derangement Syndrome on HN recently? Any change in any Google service prompts the same "I'm taking all my toys and going home" response. Google used to have a separate profile system just like profiles.yahoo.com, and like Yahoo, having lots of disparate services with weak unification was a problem. G+ is that unifying profile layer. Is it really beyond the pale for a service to prompt you to enter some optional information about yourself? Yes, optional, as in, I have hundreds of followers on G+ with obviously bogus profiles. You don't have to use G+'s social feed, you don't have to friend anyone. I personally barely use Twitter or Facebook, mostly as single-sign-on to forums and other sites.

Kurts 13y ago
It's either an unhealthy obsession with Google or just old fashioned astroturf. I have a third theory that since Matt Cutts started commenting here, he brought the SEO types with him, and they don't much care for fluctuating algorithms. Anyways it's like no one cares about a standard util Google drops it, and somehow social becomes a sin when Google dabbles in it. Any Google bashing item or just expressed feigned outrage often shoots straight to the top of the main page.
svitcov 13y ago
If Google just wanted me to add a few relevant details to my primary account for some obvious useful purpose, details that would be kept private, I would happily oblige. However, this goes beyond that: Google is asking me to share information with no apparent application use (birth date?! gender???) to ANYONE who stumbles upon my G+ profile. I am not against unifying their services - in fact, this is what Google's basic authentication service should and could have done - but that is not the full extent of what is happening here, as far as I can tell.
- tekacs 13y ago
  You don't actually have to share those details publicly if you don't want, to be fair. :/ Edit: for comparison and openness's sake, my profile: https://plus.google.com/116103902550362700148/about https://plus.google.com/116103902550362700148/about I have few qualms about sharing that, given that I know exactly what I've shared from there.

ams6110 13y ago

Note to web services businesses: give your users the option to have a local account, and give them an option to change from one 3rd party authenticator to another or to a local account.

svitcov 13y ago
This would be an ideal solution for this situation, but the problem remains: if I cannot authenticate via the 3rd party initially, the service has no way of knowing that I am actually the owner of the account. I am not sure what the working implementation of this looks like.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  Email verification with a newly generated local password. That's what Meetup did after I quit Facebook, and it was only 3-4 minutes of friction.
  - svitcov 13y ago
    Doh. Of course - that would have been easy and effective.

Grue3 13y ago

It's just so they can brag about having more "active users" than Twitter/Facebook/whatever.

turing 13y ago
That's not really fair. Google has been pretty good about defining activity on G+, much more so than either Twitter or Facebook. For example, they give individual numbers for total users visiting G+ on web/mobile, people using G+ features across all products (+1s, shares, comments), and total number of accounts.
- frostmatthew 13y ago
  Source? (all I've ever heard is that Google considers someone an "active" G+ user if they have a G+ account and have used any Google product over the period in question)
  - turing 13y ago
    http://marketingland.com/google-hits-135-million-users-27904 http://marketingland.com/google-hits-135-million-users-27904 "According to new Google figures, Google+ now has 135 million active users, with 235 million active users when counting Google properties with Google+ features, and 500 million with Google+ enabled accounts."
    - frostmatthew 13y ago
      Thanks, that's interesting, I've only seen the "active users when counting Google properties with Google+ features" type numbers but nice to see a number (135m) for actually using G+ (probably higher now since that link is a few months old). Though I disagree with your [original] statement that Google is "defining activity" much more so than Facebook http://newsroom.fb.com/content/default.aspx?NewsAreaId=22 http://newsroom.fb.com/content/default.aspx?NewsAreaId=22
      - 13y ago

mieses 13y ago

Most of my family members will sooner dump Gmail than create a Google+ account.

svitcov 13y ago
I feel similarly. What I've been doing is just deleting my G+ account each time Google creates it, but if it becomes too much of an issue, I will be forced to switch. A real pity - I love gmail.
cromwellian 13y ago
Some would say having your family members avoid G+ is one of the primary benefits of G+. So instead of being barraged by a stream of photos of cousins and aunts you haven't seen in decades, or discussing family gossip, you get to engage in interesting conversations based on people with similar strong interests in particular topics. None of the people I follow on G+ are 'friends' with the exception of co-workers, instead, they are people who have very interesting things to say and who I like interacting with. Twitter would be a comparable use case, but it is too annoying to have long form stream discussions with followers like this.
- frostmatthew 13y ago
  That doesn't sound like a very good "primary benefit" since Google's strategy is clearly to get as many people to use G+ as possible. Either a) they'll be successful and your G+ stream will be barraged by "photos of cousins and aunts" anyway or b) it's not successful and they pull the plug.
  - cromwellian 13y ago
    I don't think it's either-or. Even if they show up, G+ is by default, an asymmetric model. And G+ isn't just about the "stream". Google would have done something like G+ anyway to unify 40+ services. You might be right that they want more than a niche audience, on the other hand, Google does want to elevate the public square. Having a segmented by interest social network is a primary benefit. I come to HackerNews not because I'm friends with anyone here, but because I can interact with interesting people here. It's also why I go to G+ every. The level of dialogue on G+ is much better than Facebook on average, and the G+ communities are a lot better than Facebook pages.

dannyr 13y ago

Wow. This is the worst thing that could happen. Creating a Google+ account is such a travesty. It's such a waste of time and effort that could be better spent ranting on Hacker News. You should avoid everything Google. In principle, avoid any site that displays Google ads. By visiting ads, you're enabling Google to do all these evil things.

pacomerh 13y ago
Pff Evil things. Are you a saint now?
EugeneOZ 13y ago
I'll better avoid advices, based on blind hate.

isarang 13y ago

you should try google plus.. try communities and follow some googlers :)

plg 13y ago

the problem is that I may want a gmail account or I may want to use google hangouts to videochat with friends or I may want or need to use google calendar ... but I do NOT want to have a social network account. Google has made it so I have no choice.

turing 13y ago
I'm curious, why are you so vehemently opposed to having an account? You could very easily just not provide public profile information, never post, and never add anyone.
- viraptor 13y ago
  Not sure about plg's reason, but I will avoid ever creating a plus account due to their strange policies for name verification. I'm not sure if it was improved lately or not, but many accounts were suspended previously when names didn't look English as far as I remember. Mine's definitely not an English one and it contains some non-ascii characters. Avoiding services which require plus accounts is much easier than dealing with potential account suspension.
- plg 13y ago
  which begs the question ... why do I need a G+ account? It's not like I am asking google to implement some ability that has previously been not implemented... rather google has decided to eliminate a little piece of choice ... or freedom ... or whatever you want to call it ... for their users. Why? Because it's better for them. Which brings one back to something that has been posted many many times ... you are not the customer, you are the product. As long as you're OK with that, go for it... but my bet is that the vast majority of google's users have little concept of the issue of customer vs product. I'm just a little sad to see google take another step towards being a faceboob instead of taking one step away from them.
  - turing 13y ago
    "why do I need a G+ account?" "Because it's better for them." You've answered your own question. I also believe that the customer vs product issue is much more nuanced than most people portray it to be.

6d0debc071 13y ago

I used to review apps on the play store before it switched over to google+, and a number of the comment systems on websites I go to use it now so I don't comment on them anymore.

nacs 13y ago
I noticed this also. Why should I give my real name to post a review of a game I play on my Android for 5 minutes? Some of this forced Google plus integrations they're doing are just getting ridiculous.

Lagged2Death 13y ago

Yes, I was required to set up a Google+ account some time ago to re-log-in to YouTube or Picasa Web Albums - I don't remember which. The description of what was going on didn't make it clear to me that following the prescribed steps would create a Google+ account, but that was the effect. However, there was a saving grace, as far as I'm concerned. I was allowed to remove my real name from my Google account and use my ancient on-line alias instead. That's all I ever wanted.

gaara87 13y ago
I think its picasa

oellegaard 13y ago

This is super stupid. I have two business accounts and a personal account. Google now forced me to have 3 Google Plus profiles - and yes, I did discover exactly the same. I'm actively trying to replace Google with other things. They clearly lost their sense of quality.

packetslave 13y ago

Can I ask which service it was where this happened? It's possible this is a bug or an OAuth setting that's specific to the site in question. Feel free to email if you prefer (address in profile) edit: grammar

buro9 13y ago

Google Apps allows domain owners to disable G+. Will this option vanish?

gaara87 13y ago

Finally! Google as a company unifying their user login. Its about time. For privacy freaks like me: share only what you want. If you dont like this, you have the freedom to leave the service at anytime (along with deleting all your data also)

rekursiv 13y ago

I just tested this and was able to sign into userstyles.org just fine on a blank account with no G+ profile. Are you sure it wasn't an option that the third-party service was enabling?