"thing I use to send email" and "thing I use to watch music videos" are not conceptually distinct?

Most users would send as emails to others the kinds of things they leave as comments on youtube?

The word "I" showed up in both of those sentences. To most users, unifying all of their data adds a lot of value.

Google reads my GMails from major airlines, and shows me when my next flight is when I Google Search for "when is my next flight". The flight also just pops up on Google Now on my Android phone. It also knows where I am, and where the airport is, so it tells me how long it will take to drive there.

When I Google search for La Cucaracha on my desktop, when I walk out to my car and look at my phone, it automatically suggests Navigating to La Cucaracha.

When I Subscribe to a YouTube video, it automatically shows up in my GMail as a feed.

I find value in these things, and I'm sorry you don't.

> I find value in these things

Well then good for you, and you should be able to merge all your accounts with Google into one; but why should this be almost compulsory?

What's more, if there's so much value into this, why does Google have to force its users to do it?

> Well then good for you, and you should be able to merge all your accounts with Google into one; but why should this be almost compulsory?

Quite often here on Hacker News we sit around and talk about how removing features or options from an App is often the best thing to do for usability. I think this is true. At the same time every time this comes up with regards to Google or some other large company the response flips around completely.

Ultimately I think the readership here is just the 10% of users that want the option, exactly the group we often say that should be ignored for the overall good of the product.

"I'm annoyed at YouTube for bothering me to use my real name" is not exclusively an HN thing. Most content creators in the video game community who publish on YT do it under an alias, or under an account representing their website/community. For us, YT's failure to separate personal accounts from organization/business accounts (the main complaint in the article) is a constant problem.

It's not that.

It's Google becoming more and more mainstream. It's Lowest Common Denominator Google.

Every revision, something else is gone. Another menu is missing, another option.

After scouring enough Google Support forums, tinkering in enough settings and trying enough workarounds, it's the only solution I can come to.

Google isn't the hacker search engine we fell in love with over a decade ago.

It's an advertising company looking to monetize on a user's lack of privacy to help connect them with advertisers. Adwords is 99% of their business. We can't just ignore that forever.

The lowest common denominator of user is the the type of user is probably most susceptible not controlling their privacy well enough and for Google being able to target them widely. How much does Google really care about us ad-block toting hacker types anyway?

I really hate that attitude. I'm tired of seeing features and options constantly disappearing from the applications I use.

They want it because it is simpler and more efficent. Only a small amount of users (very, very small) would explicitly opt out to a non unfied system. For those few user, keeping up the old system or building stronger separation in the new system is just nosensical for them.

Not happy with the options in there service, use something diffrent.

Well, it's not. YouTube asked me exactly once if I want to use my Google+ name and pic on YouTube. I said no. It said Ok. Didn't ask since then.

I've been asked multiple times, trying to get me to use my real name on YT.

I haven't been asked for years. I have the same username i had in 2006.

Well, if you really didn't want to, you could always create separate Google accounts for each service.

I think that at least Youtube accounts now require a phone number when registering. I don't know for sure, but I doubt you can give the same number for multiple accounts.

Create a fake phone number

"The word "I" showed up in both of those sentences. To most users, unifying all of their data adds a lot of value."

So you want your every identity online to be tied together? Your usenet posts to alt.sex.hello-kitty, your responses to ads on Craigslist, your interactions with old friends on facebook, your interactions with professional contacts on linkedin (if you use it), your interactions on some neighborhood blog, your political commentary on some political blog, whatever?

After all, if you were describing all of them, you'd use the word "I"!

So, the only reasonable interpretation of my position is to carry it to the ridiculous extreme?

Or do you acknowledge that there's clearly a balance of benefit and pain, and Google is merely slightly to the wrong side of where you'd want them to be?

How is that a ridiculous extreme? People have different persona and personal facets in real life that the prefer to keep separate for various reason. That can be as simple as "Work" and "Home" to political views, lifestyle choices etc. The simplest solution online is to use multiple accounts, Google (and others) desperately want you to use only one and do their best to force it. Yes, this way they can provide/extract "value" by being able to collect every thing about you. The flip side is that they have everything about you all linked, personally I view Google et al or the Government doing it just as creepy.

I wouldn't say Google desperately wants you to have one. I use three separate Google accounts and switch between them with ease. YouTube is the only one that hassles me to merge, but given the quality of YouTube comments I can understand them wanting to tie your account to your real name.

Your justification for tying everything together, not only a single method of signing on but a single pervasive identity, was just that ... it's a single person using the things. That's not a very good justification. And your example of a Good Thing that comes from it, by way of contesting my claim that youtube and gmail (or g+) are conceptually distinct, used something else entirely, involving email and planes. (And actually I would prefer those things not to be done automatically!)

The funny thing is that all those features work right now, without unifying your Google accounts.

I trust Google to come up with clever integrations in the future. The OP does not. I think it's his loss.

Even if different properties have different profiles, Google will still have access to each more then enough data to create these clever integrations in the future. I don't even mind if they have a hidden 'aggregate' profile they use for those features.

The frustration comes from removing the option of customizing my profile for each service.

Banana72 shared a YouTube video with you...? What the hell?

Banana72...? Oh, right, on YouTube VikingCoder is called Banana72.

I think you're asking for a feature which would confuse the hell out of most users.

Unfortunately, that's hard to say without doing proper usability testing.

I managed to find a decent looking study that somewhat supports my position [1]. Here's an interesting quote from the abstract:

"many (40%) were hesitant to consent to the release of their personal profile information; and (6) many (36%) ex- pressed concern with the use of SSO on websites that contain valuable personal information or, conversely, are not trust- worthy. We also found that with an improved affordance and privacy control, more than 60% of study participants would use Web SSO solutions on the websites they trust."

[1] https://cups.cs.cmu.edu/soups/2011/proceedings/a4_Sun.pdf

This is a very important discussion -- I'd love to see some papers that study the benefits of a single login / profile, rather then the negatives.

Many (40%) were hesitant to use Facebook, when it was described to them, citing privacy concerns. And then 98% of them did.

How people say they will act, and how they act, are completely different animals.

That probably has a lot to do with network effects - even if a lot of people would be hesitant to use Facebook, all their friends are on there rather than a more privacy-preserving alternative. Same reason everyone keeps using eBay even though they continue to get shitter and shitter.

Hence the need for studies ;)

I don't disagree with your sentiment so I had to go back and re-read the OPs thoughts.

I think he had a Group Youtube channel. He logged in using his individual account onto his Group Youtube channel and it linked his individual G+ to the group Youtube. When he unlinked this, it disable his Group Youtube.

I think this is pretty serious stuff. If youtube allows you to group individual accounts, then you dont want to link a group channel to an individual account. I think thats the concerns being raised here.

It's a transition time. They're making the right choices. It's unfortunate that the transition from the current state to the new state is painful.

Ultimately, do you agree with the direction, and can you forgive them for the missteps?

I mean, how many times was "re-install Microsoft Windows, and all of your applications" the only option?

I get that it's painful for some people, and I don't mean to diminish that. But my God, this guy wasted an entire afternoon on configuring his free service.</sarcasm>

It's not free if the content we upload becomes content Google offers to other users for entertainment, which advertisers pay Google to be a part of. It's not free if Google offers advertisers inroads into our "mandatory unified profiles and connected personal data streams".

The OP is merely expressing what a lot of people are experiencing, and not just technical people. I know plenty of non-technical people who avoid mainstream Google because it's like "getting a passport" and "signing over your life" just to upload a video.

The user experience of being part of YouTube is crap. The barrier to entry is too heavily weighted towards "registration" and "validation" rather than just having fun and joining something fun.

Email is NOT related to Youtube, not by any stretch. So you get emamiled when someone posts a video? Wow, that really is lame. That notification could happen a million different ways, including an email to your Yahoo email address.

Google forces completely different services to be connected. It's no longer possible to rate a video out of 5 unless you have a Google+ account. It's no longer possible to have a Google+ account unless you provide Google your mobile phone number and access to all your contacts, etc etc.

Youtube was once a cool service for YOU, US. Now it's a service for "content partners" and YOU/WE are permitted to join in, provided that certain commercially motivated conditions are met. That's crap. It's like a movie cinema denying entry unless you wear a (free) t-shirt advertising their cinema. VikingCoder would say "hey, it's a free t-shirt, what are you complaining about". Well, I just want to watch a film, I do not want to be locked into the Cinema's desperate social media marketing eco-system.

"Who the hell is VikingCoder? hmm... if I click here, and here... and cross-reference these histories... yeah, looks like that's the Nicaraquan guy I talked with last week in Counter-Strike after researching fruit flies. Banana something, I think he called himself."

1/2 OT:

Navigating to La Cucaracha, i.e., literally to The Cockroach?

Is there really a place called La Cucaracha? I would have expected Google to show ads for exterminator services or maybe a link to a YouTube video featuring the La Cucaracha song … ;)

I've been to a great Mexican restaurant named La Cucaracha. Great name, huh?

I've always wondered how Chi-Chi's stayed in business, BTW.

Because who wants to go to a place called tits? Me, that's who.

Do you really consider cockroaches and tits to be on the same level?!

I doubt that most users understand that Youtube and Google are the same company. Having a single signon between those two services makes very little sense. As for the other services, those under the Google brand, it makes more sense.

It's the attempt to push Google+ on me that I dislike.

> Having a single signon between those two services makes very little sense.

Where do you draw the line? GMail, Calendar, Drive, Contacts, YouTube, Google+, Android, Chrome, Voice, Hangouts? Should they all have different sign-ons?

Is Google forbidden from integrating signons for all future companies it acquires?

Google has always integrated sign-ons between those services.

It is the unification of user profiles that is causing all the uproar.

You have a very short memory. Google has NOT always integrated sign-ons between those services, and there was an uproar when it happened.

You are right -- I don't really remember when I had to login with different credentials for Youtube, et al.

Just to clarify, I am making a distinction between being able to sign into a Youtube profile with a Google account and forcing the same profile across all Google properties.

Judging from my preferences, and based on my (limited) anecdotes, it seems that users appreciate the convenience of single-signin solutions, as long as each property they are signing into has a profile that can be managed separately.

If you seriously don't want to, just create two Google accounts...I'm using multiple sign-in across many of their web properties with my personal account and my corporate Google Apps account.

> Is Google forbidden from integrating signons for all future companies it acquires?

Forbidden, yes; held hostage by their users for all the free platforms they provide in exchange for all the theoretical dollars they generate in page views

They have their own domain name. How are they not distinct?

If you used a single site for gmail, youtube and G+, integrating it all into a single service, then you'd have a point. But they're different sites, different services. It's nice if you can use a single account for them all, and if it's easy to move content from one to the other, but that's not the same thing.