Google Quietly Nixes Mandatory G+ Integration With Gmail

An anonymous reader writes Back in 2012, Google had made it mandatory for new Gmail users to simultaneously create Google+ (G+) accounts. This is no longer so. Following the departure of G+ founder Vic Gundotra in April 2014, Google has been quietly decoupling its social media site from its other services. First, YouTube was freed, then Google+ Photos. Now, anyone who wants to create a new Gmail account unencumbered with a G+ profile can also do so.

Comments

They Don't Need G+ To Track You Anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

> Now, anyone who wants to create a new Gmail account unencumbered with a G+ profile can also do so.

The main value G+ gave to google was a way to unify all of their services so that they could track you across all of them.
But nowadays it is basically impossible to create a new account with any of google's services without giving up a phone number that they will use to "authenticate" you by sending a text or a robo-call with a number you have to type back into your browser.

That lets google track you by phone number because, 99% of the population can't be bothered to get a new phone number for each sign-up. So it really doesn't matter that you aren't using G+ to explicitly unify your google accounts, they've figured out how to implicitly do it. So the end result is the same for them, while you get a false sense of compartmentalizing your life.

Re:They Don't Need G+ To Track You Anymore

[Spy Handler]

No, the main value of G+ was that Google was losing social networking to Facebook big time and Sergei Brin decided Google cannot be left behind. So they tried to leverage gmail and youtube and all their other services into forcing you to make a G+ account to give it a big boost. (Google could already track you every way to Sunday before G+ was ever dreamed up)

The fact that they're not forcing G+ on you anymore means that after 5 years of trying, they gave up trying to beat Facebook and decided not to piss off their core users any further.

Good move...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank god... This was a TOP google annoyance. You had to be careful when signing up for the forced Google+ that you didn't inadvertently leave your permissions for sharing, +1's etc wide open to the public.

Not everyone wants every video they've marked to watch later tied back to their email address, tied back to their name on a public profile!

I never really understood it, it was so anti-customer and I actually reduced my usage of Google+ because of it. Google+'s initial appeal for me was what I felt like a more controlled sharing circles world. But then everything (Picasa web albums and photos, youtube activity) started to link into the profile. UGH! I've never posted a Google+ update since, even though I liked the way they handled photo's.

Re:Does it matter?

[petermgreen]

Some examples

One was the real names policy, previously youtube had been happy with psuedononymous commenters. With google+ they tried hard to push people into using their real names on google+ (though they eventually dropped that policy) and they also tried hard to push youtube users to sign up for google+ and use their google+ name (which was likely their real name) on youtube. It was possible to avoid it but they tried pretty hard to push people into it.

Another was that gmail users were appearing in google+ searches. Some people don't want it to be easy to search out their email accounts.