

New Google Accounts Require Gmail and Google+ - lomegor
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2012/01/new-google-accounts-require-gmail-and.html

======
technoslut
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.

~~~
marquis
One element I find disturbing is that since our work email migrated to Google
Apps and because G+ accounts are enabled by default when you happen to be
logged in to the browser and visit G+, people I don't know or care about are
adding me to their G+ circles. While I ignore these, it does concern me that
if I click on the wrong button and add someone, suddenly I have established a
relationship with, say, a client that can't be revoked easily.

~~~
jrockway
_I click on the wrong button and add someone, suddenly I have established a
relationship with, say, a client that can't be revoked easily._

Even if you were forced to use Google+, un-circling someone doesn't generate a
notification, so there's no reason to worry about creating a relationship you
can't revoke.

~~~
marquis
But they can see that you are not following them, right? I can see everyone
who has me in their circles (following). So therefore I can see who has
removed me, even if no notification is given.

~~~
jrockway
Yes, that's true. I suppose you could always just move them to a circle that
you never share with. But I agree that, if this is really a problem, it's best
not to have a Google+ account at all. (You've got to admit, though, this is a
pretty contrived scenario. Someone that runs their own web server can also
tell that you've never visited their site, for example.)

~~~
Kadrith
I thought it was possible to hide who you have in your circles. I know I can
for a page, but haven't looked for my personal account.

~~~
mvgoogler
You can hide whether the list of people who you are following shows up on your
profile. You can't, AFAIK, hide the fact that you are following someone from
the person themselves.

In other words, if you have person B in your circles, you can hide whether
person C (or the general public) can find out that person B is in your
circles. You can't prevent person B from knowing that they are in your circles
(thought they won't know _which_ circles they are in).

I'm pretty sure this is the model. I can confirm it if you'd like.

------
phunel
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>).

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
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.)

~~~
phunel
Good idea on the backup MX.

I do have Exim4 setup on a Linode for outgoing status updates (mainly
Fail2Ban), but have yet to use it in lieu of Gmail/Google Apps.

As mentioned previously I'm a bit nervous about leaving my mail on a third
party box - though Linode has been nothing but a reliable service to date.

~~~
jrockway
What's your reason for being worried? The government can get a search warrant
for your house just as easily as they can get one for Linode's servers. The
only difference is that when Lindoe's servers are seized, they eat the cost.
(And you aren't awakened at 3am by dudes with guns. Not that this has happened
to me :)

If you're worried for backup reasons, just sync with offlineimap. I do this to
have a faster local cache (since I consider Linode more reliable than my
desktop computer). (Even gmail is fine if you back it up.)

~~~
phunel
I'm far less worried about government intrusion than I am generally of
corporate intrusion. The relationship, as it stands, consists of me willingly
giving all my private communications to a third party I have no standing with.
I'm questioning my own behavior in that equation much more than any scenario
where a government entity serves and act on a warrant. I don't ever expect to
be in that position, nor have I, but I have been in the position where my
commercial and private correspondents has been violated by companies I am in
competition with and employees who I no longer work with. Good luck with the
lawsuit, the damage has been done in those situations.

~~~
jrockway
Take a look at Google's privacy principles here:

<http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy/>

I can't speak for Google, of course, but my own take is that privacy is taken
very seriously internally. Perhaps more seriously than anything else,
actually. Google is generally open with employees with respect to source code,
financial data, and access controls, they are not that way with user data. I
don't have access to it, and couldn't get access to it unless it's vital to
the success of my project (and then, only for a limited time period).

I even have a sticker with the 5 privacy principles stuck to my monitor's
base.

~~~
marshray
Don't confuse "internal secrecy" with "user privacy".

That user data is company property and its secrecy is what gives it value.
Furthermore, if users caught wind of just how much of it exists that could
jeopardize its source.

~~~
jrockway
We tell users exactly how we use their data. We're even running an ad campaign
on the NYC subway (and presumably elsewhere) about how we use user data in
non-intuitive ways.

Here's the relevant section:

<http://www.google.com/goodtoknow/data-on-google/>

~~~
marshray
Thank you for responding. I notice that that page talks primarily about search
terms (and in noncommittal terms about how much Google values privacy) and it
doesn't seem to apply to the other parts of the expanding portal.

Just to pick one example, where does it say what you do with the data you
collect on users when they click a link from YouTube. E.g., the page
<http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy> has a link that displays on the page
as

    
    
        Website: http://www.khanacademy.org
    

But when you click on it, it actually goes to

    
    
        http://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.khanacademy.org%2F&session_token=oJd2SDBY1T6kY0eXgYddT3firut8MTMyNzE5MDY5NkAxMzI3MTA0Mjk2
    

The information on users' link-clicking habits being skimmed from that little
trick (and the many others like sourcing script from Google-controlled domains
on most sites on the web), is it associated with the G+ identity? Or not?
Where is this documented?

------
dexen
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
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
For Google Apps G+ is an opt-in service.

------
pilif
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
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.

------
toddsundsted
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
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
I hadn't thought of it this way before, but it sure smacks of
Lycos/Yahoo/Netscape portalization of Google to me.

------
stevengg
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
They started allowing aliases on G+.

~~~
jdp23
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.

------
spodek
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.

~~~
jrockway
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
"GCreep: Google Engineer Stalked Teens, Spied on Chats (Updated)"
<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.

~~~
mvgoogler
_"Not wholly sure what the outcome of the above was"_

Did you actually read the complete article?

 _"We dismissed David Barksdale for breaking Google's strict internal privacy
policies. We carefully control the number of employees who have access to our
systems, and we regularly upgrade our security controls–for example, we are
significantly increasing the amount of time we spend auditing our logs to
ensure those controls are effective. That said, a limited number of people
will always need to access these systems if we are to operate them
properly–which is why we take any breach so seriously."_

I can tell you that privacy is taken very seriously within the company and
that access to PII (Personally Identifiable Information) is quite restricted
and access to it is logged and monitored.

~~~
eliasmacpherson
I read it some time ago. In the case above, it had to be brought to google's
attention and so I would say the logging and monitoring is not invincible. Who
polices your log access monitors? I understand that gmail is somewhat
distributed and policing remote sites in poorer areas is problematic -
especially if one were to consider how much easier it would be to persuade
google employees in those areas, should gmail/g+ be offshored in the future.

Should have elaborated: I'm not sure if a civil/criminal proceeding arose out
of the case above.

~~~
mvgoogler
_"In the case above, it had to be brought to google's attention and so I would
say the logging and monitoring is not invincible."_

The answer is right in the blurb that I posted: _"...for example, we are
significantly increasing the amount of time we spend auditing our logs to
ensure those controls are effective..."_

In other words, this incident pointed out a weakness in the system and it is
being addressed. From personal experience I can tell you that it is - in fact
- being addressed and more controls and monitoring have been rolled out and
more are being rolled out. I don't feel comfortable going into details, but
from the perspective of a working engineer I have both had conversations about
this with senior VPs and have had to do work to comply with the new controls
(and have more work planned in the upcoming quarter to be compatible with
upcoming controls that are even stronger).

------
RexRollman
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
You were bothered when an operating system started including an internet
browser? That's rather silly, don't you think?

~~~
Drbble
A broken browser that intentionally broke the Internet.

~~~
Karunamon
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.

------
keturn
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.

------
Aloisius
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/screenshot20120120at1...](http://img576.imageshack.us/img576/199/screenshot20120120at110.png)

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?

------
bengebre
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-
go...](http://www.troublefixers.com/how-to-delete-google-plus-or-google-
account-safely-without-deleting-google-or-gmail-account/)

~~~
pilif
I still see the link - it moved from the G+ setting to the Google Account
settings.

~~~
bengebre
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>

My guess is it's going away for everyone, but I guess that's speculation.

------
luckystarr
Google is the new Yahoo! now.

------
badclient
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...

------
dustingetz
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
Another desperate attempt to get more G+ users :)

~~~
gkka
I agree

------
joshuahedlund
_Until now, creating a Google account was quite simple._

You don't usually see websites boasting that their processes _used_ to be
simpler.

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

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

