I don't think it's just google+. I noticed my gmail account logging me into youtube yesterday. I've avoided opening a google+ account so as to avoid that kind of thing from happening, I have remained logged out of my gmail account since.
I don't like this one bit. I was on Youtube and noticed I was logged in. Then when I logged out on a "Video Sharing Site", I was logged out of my "E-Mail Program" that was open in another tab too. I was scared for a second that a public Youtube profile had been made from my gmail-address, so people can view my last log-ins. I also looked, to no avail, at a way to disconnect my personal Gmail-account from Youtube.
I will miss the personalization. But for me this too will mean less browsing while logged into Google services. It is not the same scale like Spotify requiring a Facebook account, but it is close enough to make me cringe and worry about my favorite online services.
I don't like having multiple browser windows opened though. It just dawned on me that Gmail was the only reason I was not using private mode full time. Now my browser is in private mode from start up.
I've just moved to using Empathy and Evolution(ugh) to check mail. I'd be interested in getting a command line version of the two up.
I'd really like a way of setting up multiple persistent browser sandboxes in Firefox or Chrome, so I can have separate sets of logged-in accounts associated with each.
Browse Facebook and related sites in one window, Google products in another, and use a third for general web-browsing, all persistent across sessions, but without any sandbox knowing what's going on in any other.
It should just mean browsing Gmail in a 'Private Mode' Chrome/Firefox window.
That's a good idea, though still not quite frictionless enough for lazy people like me.
It's a bigger issue when I'm just browsing around and click a link that takes me to YouTube.
What's needed (as someone else here suggested, more or less) is an add-on smart enough to recognize a set of domains and always follow these links by creating a private mode window.
Scared the shit out of me as well and I absolutely hate it.
The sad thing is: There would be an easy solution to solve this trickery. Just giving Firefox a right click option. Not "open in new window", not "open in new tab" but "open in clean (aka cookie free) window".
With I had the coding skills to realize that. Or is there already something similar out?
I think the number of people that use private browsing/incognito mode for this purpose makes it obvious that something is needed. Mozilla and google talked a lot about various proposals around "identity" being managed in the browser rather than via websites starting about a year ago.
Mozilla's BrowserID focused more on a really good way of managing a single identity (per Firefox profile), whereas Chrome's MultiProfiles were focused on easily switching between multiple profiles with separate cookies, history, passwords, etc (whether that's for multiple people or a single person with multiple but separate needs online).
Multi-profiles seem good for your need...you can stay signed in with a persistent google cookie in one window (maybe just keeping gmail open), while doing all your regular surfing without the cookie in another window, under a different profile.
Both are still in development though. I don't see multi-profiles in about:flags in chrome, and some poking around shows you might need to run chrome with a command flag, which is a pain. Reviewers seem to like it, though.
edit: it's not a nice integrated browser function, but I guess you could get equivalent functionality by just running different Firefox instances with different profiles. I don't know if there are any problems with that approach, though.
I was a but creeped out when they automatically logged me in to youtube. After I found out there was no way to log out of youtube without logging out of Google Reader and Gmail, I am checking my RSS feeds and email a lot less. There should be an option to opt out, it's ridiculous.
Last time I checked, there was a way to unlink your Youtube account from the Google one, so it may worth a check, but no guarantees here as Google changed a lot on this front lately.
Just tried it, and you can indeed unlink the accounts. But you can't login with just a youtube account. You need a Google account.
Still useful to relink to a throwaway account instead of the main gmail account. But I'm not sure the multiple account will let you stay logged in correctly..
I keep thing separate by doing only Google things in Chrome and everything else in Firefox.
I will continue to shun Google+ because of the stories about people being shut out of it over the 'looks like a real name' rules because I have an Android phone and can't risk losing access to it.
You might want to try netvibes.com as an alternative to using Google for its RSS feature. It has some nice features, for example being able to Tweet an RSS headline directly out of the interface.
/not affiliated, just some hardcore user
i love the absolute shit of gmail, and im in this situation where i am willing to pay for it to not bother me to with g+ youtube.
I do not want to go back to thunderbird but gmail is creeping me more and more. The best part is i recommended it to all my friends and stood on googles side on more then one occasion.
Is there a space for a startup that will make a gmail alternative. There is toons of saas startups but none in this space.
Maybe I'll find some nice command line email client that I can get to work on different OSes/cross platform. That's the main head scratcher for now, it was too easy to forget just how well gmail as a web app works on any given system. Friends have offered me money to set up an email service for them, they'd trust me before google. It's not sufficient motivation for me. At least they know what they signed up for.
At the moment I don't mind using google's infrastructure, I have had an overhanging inclination to get away from their services since Buzz happened. Convenience prevailed! Even without the new auto signup/login, they already have my IP indexed usage stats which could be joined on my gmail logged in IP address/cookie, but to have it out in the open like this probably allows third parties to go looking for it. This new development is linking your real name with what you consume on youtube. I have no interest in giving up that info so easily.
