What strange timing. In a comment on my Google Plus thoughts I mentioned that my Google Apps account was still stuck and could not be transitioned to the new Google service platform that allowed using that account on other services (such as Google Voice – which previously required a gmail account)
Minutes later, I checked, and my account was amazingly ready to be transitioned. My expectation was that I’d be able to merge accounts, address books, etc — but as you’ll see below — that wasn’t the case.
So for context how did this all happen.
- I started using Google Apps so I could run email on my own domain but with the awesome gmail interface
- Certain servies like Google Voice then required either a gmail account or a separate google account. I used my gmail account for a while and lived with multiple logins and two separate address books
- I then got a notice from Google that they were ready to “transition” Apps to the unified platform, but that my account was “conflicted” and that I was using the same email address on Apps and on other services. The thing was, that other email was simply my Apps email address. But alas, I (incorrectly in hindesight) switched my Google Account to a new address that was an alias of my main Google Apps account.
If you are still with me, this is what I saw next when I initiated the transition:
So for some reason I was not going to be able to transition the data from one to the other.
This was followed by the choice to create a new gmail account or use a non google email address:
I chose a non-google account for this, and that part went smoothly.
But now I’m a bit stuck.
- When I log in to Google Voice, it wants me to create a new account with a new phone #. I have to go back to using the account switcher to pull up my original account
- My Google contacts / address book is still split across two separarte accounts, which is a real pain when using Google Voice
- And now I have two Google Plus accounts — but people only seem to find me on the original gmail/google account one
- When I click on links from Google Apps gmail I’m often loading up the wrong Google account — for things like Calendar — not good.
So all in all — not great, but not much worse than what I had previously. My hope was that I could merge things a bit, and just have a single account for everything – especially with Google Voice.
Anyone else stuck in this world ? Any suggestions ?
Daniel Bachhumer has already chimed in to my tweet complaining about this 😉 :
Raanan Bar-Cohen 
If I had a time machine, I would go back and warn everyone not to use Google Apps. It’s been nothing but heartache for everyone I know who has tried it. 😦
Ya, I think for individuals it’s getting hard to make the case for google apps these days. For companies and orgs — still pretty attractive.
Indeed, this transition process has been confusing and frustrating for my mitcho.com account; in some sense, though, I can’t imagine what a headache it would be for a real corporation with thousands of accounts on Google Apps, though.
What would you recommend @markjaquith?
In the exactly the same boat, @raanan. If anything, glad to see I’m not alone in it. About to start manually migrating data from the google account to the google apps account for all the services they didnt previouisly support (Voice, Bookmarks, Reader, etc) as well as the docs shared with me that always ended up in the google account not the apps account. I’d guess a lot of work ahead.
Google Apps users are usually paying customers, influencers, or both. I find Google’s continuous disregard for these users rather bizarre.
Hey Raanan –
I actually went through this a good while back. Most services will transition, but a couple stubborn ones don’t. You can move a Google Voice account – at least once (or I have been able to do so) -by using a form that you can find online. The form that will usually come up redirects you to another set of forms, because the original one has been retired, but the process does seem to work.
Most other services will transfer, though some you have to do manually (reader, for instance), and others you have to share access to and/or set up again from scratch, but you can make them work (analytics, webmaster tools). The real kicker (for me) is AdSense, because apparently that account is so tied to your original Google account that they cannot undo it at all at this point. Docs is a bit of a pain, because you can share access, but transferring ownership out of the Apps account doesn’t work, and you can end up with a mish-mash of owned documents.
In the end, I got so tired of logging into two separate accounts and keeping track of the details that I just moved back to my gmail account, and now have my Apps account(s) forward to the personal one (@gmail). Life is simple again. Drop me a line if you want more details. I have done more digging and experimentation with this than anyone should ever have to do!