
Google login now requires Google+ Account - svitcov
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 &#x27;sign in with Google&#x27; 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?
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cromwellian
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.

~~~
6d0debc071
> 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.

No, it wasn't. It was very simple. You want an account for youtube, sign up on
youtube, you want an account for something else - sign up there. You want your
accounts to be the same login across all the services? Use the same login
across all the services.

It wasn't confusing, it wasn't complex, it didn't present any problems to
anyone of even moderate intelligence.

> Is it really beyond the pale for a service to prompt you to enter some
> optional information about yourself?

It's not really optional when they start tying everything together. I don't
want my real name tied to any of my online activities - but if my google
accounts were stuck together through google+ it would be, because I use my
real name on my phone.

It's possible to lie of course, and tell a different lie with a different
email address for every time you want to limit the degree to which different
portions of your data contaminate other things. But it's a pain in the arse
and only realistically possible because they're not enforcing their single
sign on policy that strongly yet.

They're made it far more complicated to keep your privacy than it was before.

~~~
cromwellian
Having to create a separate account on N services with the same credentials is
simpler than having a unified account? And what if your login is already taken
on one of the other services, now you're forced to have multiple credentials.
And then when you need to update something, like change an email address,
2factor authentication, or some other feature, you've now got to edit settings
on many services.

If you want an anonymous Google account, simply create one, which is what
everyone has been doing for a long time, even for gmail prior to G+, people
would create multiple accounts.

The model isn't K identities and N services, you need O(K*N) credentials in
the worse case. It's K identities and N services is O(K) credentials.

~~~
noloqy
> If you want an anonymous Google account, simply create one

I did. I had to sign up with a "backup" email address though, for which I
entered my primary email address. Now, whenever Gmail users send an email to
my primary email address, they see the bogus name that I created the anonymous
Google account with. Crap.

And Youtube, please stop asking me to use my "real" name. Is it that hard to
remember my preferences?

------
eksith
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.

~~~
znowi
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.

------
dannyr
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.

~~~
EugeneOZ
I'll better avoid advices, based on blind hate.

------
oellegaard
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.

------
Grue3
It's just so they can brag about having more "active users" than
Twitter/Facebook/whatever.

~~~
turing
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
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
[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
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)

~~~
turing
It is nice that they break up mobile from the total and that they provide
daily active users. That said, I didn't see anything on that page that
actually defined what they mean by 'active', so I think my point still stands.
Then again, it's known Facebook usage is, for the time being at least,
significantly higher than G+, so I guess it doesn't really matter.

------
ams6110
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
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
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
Doh. Of course - that would have been easy and effective.

------
6d0debc071
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
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.

------
mknits
It's time to dump Google. Alternatives: [http://prism-break.org](http://prism-
break.org)

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

~~~
cromwellian
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
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
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.

------
plg
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
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.

~~~
plg
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
"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.

------
Lagged2Death
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
I think its picasa

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

------
gaara87
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)

------
packetslave
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

------
rekursiv
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?

------
buro9
Google Apps allows domain owners to disable G+.

Will this option vanish?

