Google Plus

Google Apps Account Transitioned — No Migration — Now What ?

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 😉 :

Google Plus Thoughts

I’m really impressed with the launch of Google+. Given the number of people internally @ Google who’ve been dogfooding this, it’s equally impressive that it was kept under wraps for this long.

After using Google+ for a few days – wanted to jot down some early impressions:

  • Having the new toolbar across all Google services is a huge deal. Whatever I’m doing during the day, good chance I’m on some Google property at one point, and seeing that little red notification box for Google+ is likely to draw me in for a few minutes.
  • Email notifications were defaulted to on – and while I’ve since turned most of them off — the initial flood of emails that I’m sure everyone saw with people getting added to ‘Circles’ – gave the service that feel that everyone is joining up. Totally opposite from the Buzz launch, where everything was just ‘on’ day one.
  • One problem I’m having though, is that I don’t recognize a big chunk of people that are adding me — similar to the Twitter followers for most people I would guess. Would be nice to have the Google People widget (or for bonus points Rapportive) integrated somehow (or simply on hover) to get a 360 snapshot of who these people are.
  • I’m a google apps (for your domain) power user. As best I can tell, Google Apps users have been excluded from the initial Google+ rollout, so I’ve been using my google account/gmail account. I’m hoping that’s the right decision, and that I won’t need to redo everything I’ve done so far with my Google Apps account at some point.
  • Related to the apps account — on Android, the Google+ app doesn’t find my gmail account — keeps trying my main google apps/domain account.
  • I tested uploading a photo, and it forced me to also create an album — found that a bit odd
  • How do I push my WordPress posts to Google+ ?  I’m guessing that’s coming soon when the APIs are unveiled – but would have been nice to see an easy way to do that day 1 – or maybe I missed it ?

Overall: I think Google+ is a product that is going to gain some meaningful market share — and quickly. They’ve seemingly taken all the criticisms of the other services and addressed them – especially with Circles. And now we’ll see how all the services will compete head-to-head.  One thing’s for sure, it’s great to see some competitions and innovation in this space and Google deserves huge credit (at least so far) for keeping at it, and not letting Buzz, Wave, and a few other launches deter them from tackling this space – i.e. a good lesson at not listening to your detractors, and just keeping your head down and working on good products.