Google, Gmail, and Google Apps Accounts Explained
February 19, 2010 at 10:24 am
by Gina Trapani
If you've taken the leap and hosted your domain email with Google Apps, no doubt you've noticed that you miss out on services that regular Gmail accounts get: like Google Reader, Voice, Wave, Analytics, and right now, Buzz.
After complaining about the disparities on a recent episode of This Week in Google, a helpful Googler unofficially got in touch to clarify and confirm the problem. Let's call her/him "Helpful McGoogler." Here's what HM said.
To the user, it may appear that there are three types of Google accounts: Gmail accounts, Google accounts, and Google Apps (for your domain) accounts. In truth, there's only one kind of account: a Google Account.
Helpful McGoogler explains:
Abstract the idea of a "Google Account" from being associated with Gmail or Google Apps. You can tie ANY email address to a "Google Account."
Check out https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount and notice that it asks you for your "current email address." So let's say I go to school at Big University and I have an email address helpfulmcgoogler@biguni.edu... I can use that email address while signing up and that will be my login name to access Google services.
Some of the confusion that leads to "you must have a gmail.com address" to access Google services is because a Google Account comes "for free" when you open a Gmail account. So using a Gmail address always just works.
Google Apps accounts provide a subset of Google services hosted for your domain. You get some, but not all of what vanilla Google accounts get.
Helpful McGoogler says:
When you open a Google Apps domain account. You are essentially creating a branded Google Account world for the Google services your domain is hosting. You can see your services at https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/[domain.name]/Dashboard.
So, let's say you have a Google Apps domain that is example.com and you created a user gina@example.com. You will be able to log in with gina@example.com for all your Google Apps hosted services. Typically this is email, Docs, Calendar, and Contacts... but you can click the "add more services" link to expand that. Right now, you won't find stuff like Reader, Google Voice, AdWords, Finance, Analytics, etc... but still there is some interesting stuff in there.
But what if you want to access ALL services through a single email address?
Helpful McGoogler says:
What you do is create a NORMAL Google Account (described at the beginning) and associate it with your gina@example.com email address. That "vanilla" google account will now have access to all (well, I think all) Google services. You can have a Reader account, a Voice account, an Analytics account, etc all associated with your non-gmail address. It can even have the same password--but it doesn't need to--to make it seem like it's the same account... but in reality, it's a very separate account.
Still, this just means you have two different Google accounts, with different Contacts and Calendar and Google Docs data on each. Google Apps accounts provides a subset of the services you get with a regular Google Account, and so having a GApps account duplicates those datastores. This is the scenario I complained about on TWiG.
Helpful McGoogler acknowledges that this is indeed a problem:
Here is a scenario that really trips people up... Let's say you are using your gina@example.com email and are all happy
that you have your Contacts all in-line and organized and filled out. Now you go and create a vanilla Google Account using your gina@example.com email address (mostly because you want to use Google Voice and Google Reader with the same log-in as your Apps account%u2014btw, this was totally me a couple years ago). When you set up something like Google Voice, you will expect your Contacts to be full of all the goodness you set up in your gina@example.com "hosted Gmail" instance... you will be disappointed to find your Contacts are empty.This is because the vanilla Google Account that is being used for Google Voice will be accessing a DIFFERENT "Contacts" service which has no data (sadness). My ugly solution was to initially export the contacts from my Google Apps Account and import them to my Google vanilla Account and try to keep them in sync when I make edits.
This double set of Contacts especially stinks for Android users who sign into Android with their Google Apps account, because your Google Contacts and Calendar are baked into your phone setup.
Helpful McGoogler is with me on this:
When you add Android into the mix, Contacts get weird. Because, I think, you can add your Google Apps account to Android and not your gina@example.com "vanilla" Google Account. (GT: Yes, this is true.) But, when you sign in to Google Voice on Android, you will need to enter the password (which might be the same) of your vanilla Google Account. BUT, on Android, your Contacts are read from the system's phone book. Not necessarily the vanilla Google Voice Google Account that has its separate contacts (accessible through the normal Google Voice webapp). Ugh. The "Contacts" issue is by far the most 'hurting' in this whole scenario.
Yup. Calendar is also an issue.
I thought this was the full extent of the problem, so it's nice to have even unofficial confirmation from the horse's mouth. Helpful McGoogler DID say s/he thought the teams at Google are aware of the issue and are working to address it. It also sounds like some bits of Android need to get refactored to work seamlessly with both vanilla Google accounts and Google Apps accounts.
After that episode of TWiG aired, at least three listeners emailed me saying they use third-party service Soocial to sync Contacts across their multiple Google/Google Apps accounts. I haven't tried this myself--and you may have to enter your Google account password into Soocial to set it up, which is a big red flag--but it's something.
Are you having the Google Apps account dilemma? What are you doing to deal with it? Let me know in the comments.
Update: Google Apps user Matt Jacob explains his frustrations with the Google (Apps) account dichotomy. I love how he refers to Google Apps accounts (lowercase a) versus Google Accounts (uppercase A). Clearly FREE vanilla Google Accounts get more preference than potentially-paid Google Apps accounts, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
22 comments-->
Tried a lot even this post to get a solution. My gmail is clearly adifferent game from my apps account. Would really like to get this solved so i can use only my apps account. read a lot even the google apps book by granneman still only compliated solutions and no greader and contacts with google apps.
Take care Dr Shock, not going crazy yet.
I have the same issue. For the most part right now I just import my apps contacts to my gmail contacts. But it%u2019s getting a little old.
It seems more and more I want to use the services on the gmail account because they aren%u2019t on apps.
What I%u2019ve consider doing is just having my apps account forward emails to my gmail account and start using that as my primary account.
When buzz came out I was planning on doing this, but not sure how well buzz is being received now.
I don%u2019t fully understand the complaint on the android side of things. I just add both my accounts to the phone and to my knowledge it syncs them both contact wise.
I%u2019ve been waiting for an explanation like this for years! My problem is that I thought I could merge the accounts by adding my Apps account to my vanilla account and then set the Apps email address as the primary one. It turns out you can%u2019t do that, but now my Apps account is somehow associated with the vanilla account. I really have no idea what data would and wouldn%u2019t be retained if I disassociate the two and then create a vanilla account using the method described in the article. To me, the solution *seems* so simple%u2026allow me to merge the accounts and set which email address is the primary one. Bonus points if they let me choose the alternate email address at will (ex: for emailing stories from Reader).
This issue has plagued me for years. Having an Android phone has only made it worse. Thank you Gina for raising the issue%u2014I can%u2019t wait for it to be properly addressed!
I%u2019ve been experiencing this issue for quite some time. The only things I use my Google account for are Reader, FeedBurner, YouTube and commenting on Blogspot blogs. Any mail that is sent to my gmail.com address (I believe that was the only thing available when I signed up years ago) is forwarded to my Apps address.
Because of the separation of apps, I don%u2019t use Google Voice, Wave or Buzz. These are all apps I%u2019d love to use/try, but I%u2019m not willing to jump through hoops to get things working nicely.
Thanks for addressing this Gina, this is an issue that has been haunting me for years %u2014 it%u2019s good to get some semi-official confirmation that my understanding of the way these accounts work is accurate.
BTW, I was playing with Soocial just this morning and it did NOT require that I enter passwords for either my Google Apps account or my Google Account. Seems like this may be the answer to some of my contacts-related woes.
Thx Gina for pointing it out once again. I really hope Google comes with something to migrate your Google Account (or Gmail) to your Google Apps.
I recently wrote about how you can use your Google Apps Gmail to send shared items you want to share via e-mail in Google Reader (Google Account). Tweak Google Reader to use Google Apps
I can backup the soocial recommendations. It is the most awesome app for contact sync.
An additional benefit of soocial is that it allows 2 contacts to connect so that when the contact updates his contact details it is automatically updated your side. This is really awesome because i do not have to worry about info being obsolete.
For dealing with all these other issues i have always just used my vanilla account as the main one and use the apps account as a forwarding address, because as you say. The free has more features.
Add another frustrated Apps user to your list. Maybe with Gina and TWiG%u2019s exposure of this problem we can get Google to move their butt!
I%u2019ll also backup the Soocial recommends. I use it to sync my contacts between all of my google address books, including my google apps account. That brings my contacts over to my google voice account, which is just awesome.
The Contacts issue has bothered me forever, and the only thing I can do is manually sync my regular contacts and my Google Apps contacts periodically, but it%u2019s still a pain in the neck. I wonder if it%u2019s possible to build an app to automate that sync.
This has also been a problem for me with the launch of Google Buzz, because tons of people have been adding my main vanilla Google account to their Buzz, which is also a Google Apps account, but since Buzz hasn%u2019t been added to the hosted Gmail accounts, there%u2019s not much I could do with it. The workaround I came up with is 1) use Google Dashboard (http://www.google.com/dashboard/ ) to manage the sites I have connected to Buzz; and 2) create a Fluid app for http://buzz.google.com using the latest Mobile Safari user agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16
That at least lets me do something with Buzz until they enable it in hosted Google accounts.
I really wish Google offered a way to consolidate both accounts, though.
I just checked out soocial and it does not require you to give up your account credentials. It instead asks you to grant access using the google account connect.
Gina, you are my personal hero for bringing this issue to light.
The particular irony, of course, is that a Google Apps account is penalizing PRECISELY the wrong people. It is leading-edge users who signed up for Google Apps in the first place, and it is those same users who most expect a unified experience and access to new features.
I hope your gClout can bring about an official answer to this maddening problem%u2026
Great post, I posted about these issues yesterday. Seems like the conclusions I came to were about right%u2026
http://perlmonkey.blogspot.com/2010/02/bzzt-crackle-bzzt-i-think-there-is.html
Wow, thanks for putting what I have been thinking in writing and getting some attention to it. I have been pondering what I have been doing wrong all to find out that others have the same issue. I am looking to get an android phone soon and was trying to figure out how it would all work with Google voice and my email which is on a Google aps account. Thanks for letting me know that i am not alone on this nor did I set it all up wrong! Keep us posted if you hear more.
Yet more fuel for my fire. Google needs to FIX the products it%u2019s already providing instead of coming up with new products (like Buzz/Wave) that are also part of the existing problem.
I have mixed feelings about this%u2026I kinda wish that I could have buzz%u2026but then again%u2026I am glad I don%u2019t%u2026I wish I could have wave%u2026but I never use it on my gmail account%u2026I need voice! besides that I am fine
I have that exact problem%u2026 for me (and this comes as massive fan of all things Google) if I can%u2019t get the service I want on my Apps for Domains I don%u2019t use it. However I do have one exception; Google Reader, I used that before I moved to Google Apps and so continue with that on a %u201Cnormal%u201D Google account.
Sure I tried buzz and wave but without my contacts there it%u2019s useless to me. However Soocial looks pretty interesting, might have to play around with that.Also I second everything Noah Levin said a few comments up. Thanks Gina for bringing this to the front.
As a quick follow up, Soocial worked perfectly. No passwords needed, you just have to grant it permission. Now I have all my contacts in both accounts. Google Buzz may just have become useful%u2026..
I thought I had found a solution but it turned out to be a bit kludgey. In the settings/accounts tab you can %u201CGet mail from other accounts%u201D and %u201CSend mail as%u201D the account that you received the email from. But the problem is that this solution using POP3, so my email was always delayed. I still do this within my Google Apps account since this is my main account. If Google would allow push IMAP instead of POP3 then I could live within my gmail account, basically allowing me to use Gmail as a mail client. I wrote about my solution here:
http://www.blog.matthewhooper.com/living-in-the-cloud-aka-moving-from-a-local-mail-client-to-gmail/
I have the Palm Pre running WebOS and it is very tightly integrated with Google contacts. I have multiple Google Accounts and an Apps account which syncs with the phones contacts across all accounts. If I make a change locally it will change on all my Google accounts. Same if I change in one of my accounts it will change on the phone also. Google calendar is also sync from all my accounts into the calendar app on the phone using colors to differentiate the different accounts. Now, most of this works great with those to apps, but Google Voice, Reader and such do not enjoy the same benefits, same with other Google products.
I can see how all that can be frustrating. I haven%u2019t had to deal with it yet although I am hoping to in the future when we move to Google Apps of a horrible register.com email service at work.
Playing the devils advocate: In a way I can kinda see how they may not integrate every new Google service especially those in Beta as far as the Business end goes because of possible security issues that could arise. Although they would obviously want to disable them by default and then and then make you enable them through the dashboard, but there could still be holes since things aren%u2019t sand-boxed. I know one huge worry our boss had when we suggested using Google Apps for email is both up time, support and most importantly security and privacy. And even reading the Google Apps Site it is not clear where the files are stored, how to grab them when moving them to another service or any other common security and privacy questions most business have. The answers are probably out there, but should be much more easily accessible (ok I have gone out on a bit of a tangent).
Anyway I can possibly see how they wouldn%u2019t want to integrate it right away although being able to have sandboxed contacts and sync them between two accounts seems very easy, little security issue especially within Google servers and contacts has been around a while so that seems a little silly it isn%u2019t there yet.
From the looks of it most people use some service be it a phone with something like synergy (Palm Pre) or Social which manages the syncing the accounts, cause Google has tools and api%u2019s to export and import it is just a matter of using those to keep both up to date in an automatic process and of course securely.
via smarterware.org