TCBlogTest: First Glimpse at How Google Apps Accounts will Integrate with Other Google Services

Thursday, July 08, 2010

First Glimpse at How Google Apps Accounts will Integrate with Other Google Services

Gina Trapani points to a Google Accounts Help page that explains part of how Google will allow Google Apps users to access Google services such as Voice, Reader, Buzz and Analytics with their Google Apps accounts. At present, users must maintain a separate Google account to access services that aren't part of Google Apps. Google has previously announced this coming functionality, but this is the first indication of how it will work in practice.

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Based on the help page, it appears that rather than allowing Google Apps users to import their regular Google Accounts into their Google Apps accounts, the company will simply allow the use of Google Apps e-mail addresses as logins for other Google services.

Users who created a regular Google Account using their Google Apps e-mail address would have a conflict, but Google already has a solution: users who use their Google Apps e-mail addresses for Google Accounts will be able to access their existing Google Accounts using an new, automatically created e-mail address in the form of "email+personal@my-domain.com."

Trapani laments the lack of a way to merge Google Apps accounts and regular Google Accounts, but notes that it is possible to export data from most Google services, and move Google Voice accounts from one Google Account to another, so consolidation of accounts will be possible.

The changes haven't been officially rolled out yet, but businesses can sign-up to to be testers here.

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