Google finally evil: YouTube account linked; can't separate from email

I know, this is kinda old news.

First, Google bought Youtube. I already saw a problem coming here, though mainly relating to content and traceability. However, I didn't see it happening just with user accounts themselves.

Then Google asked people to link their YT accounts to their Google accounts. I refused to do that, because my most-often-used Google account is a "proper" Gmail account, with my real name in the e-mail address itself, while my YT account is linked to my online persona and its activities. I'd like to keep them separate.

Then Google forced its users to link their YT accounts to their Google accounts. I have a Gmail account that I used for said online persona, actually, and it is currently linked to my YT account. However, this means that I cannot be signed onto YT and my most-used Gmail at the same time.

Now, I can unlink these two accounts. BUT, Google forces me to link my YT account to another Gmail address immediately, to my knowledge. However, I will not do this, because as I said earlier, I keep these my meatspace and webspace personas separate. This has a practical reason too: e-mails from my YT account get sent to the e-mail address of my Youtube account, preventing using my meatspace name to reply to webspace-related issues.

Is it really so hard to just keep two separate user databases? Seriously!

There seems to be no intention at all of unlinking these anytime in the future. Therefore, I have decided to issue a formal declaration judging that Google shall no longer be considered good.

edited 3rd Mar '11 12:49:49 PM by GlennMagusHarvey

Plus, they poked a kitten. Really hard!

It still runs off my hotmail one. That said, my gmail was created for the sole purpose of professional contact. I'm not going to link that to entertainment.

edited 17th Apr '13 1:45:57 PM by Yowuza

I've been, with the very small voice that I have, repeatedly encouraging people to pick up using Daily Motion or other user-posted video sites.

Because I DON'T want my formal e-mail used for professional contacts and my video comment blathering and everything else to be freakin' linked.

I ought to make a separate thread about web services being consolidated and linked.

Unfortunately I've kinda gotten used to using Gmail for a lot of things. I have been looking into getting e-mail addresses on other services, but I want to avoid Hotmail and Yahoo Mail from bad experiences with them and finding their ads more annoying than those in Gmail's interface. I've also got plans to make myself a mostly-hidden backup e-mail address using a very obscure service that I personally trust, though I still haven't done that, mainly because I haven't charted a course of action for how I'm going to go about using it. (I don't want to create an e-mail account just for the sake of having one.)

I also do Google Talk (a.k.a. Gchat), but that's a much easier problem to solve; I can just sign into Pidgin instead or something.

I have a bunch of John Smith accounts on this browser, I just use a different browser for my real accounts.

What, Google wasn't evil enough when they started demanding your TELEPHONE NUMBER in order to change your password or reactivate your account? Not to mention what they tried to do to TVTropes.

edited 3rd Mar '11 1:47:40 PM by SilentReverence

I've always refused to give them a telephone number.

Unfortunately, "Reduce the market share of Youtube" is not a very good rallying cry.

Try "Youtube's software and requirements suck, let's go elsewhere!"

That, and if you're posting...sensitive information, it's less likely to be taken down at a smaller and less prominent site.

All the more reason to have highly distributed communication means and networks. The lack of centralized nodes in a system can make it very resilient to attempts to take it down.

It's also possible to link multiple Gmail accounts, so you can be logged into all of them simultaneously and switch between them at will. Unfortunately, this doesn't work for Youtube yet.

You can however, first log into your Youtube gmail account, and then log into your real Gmail account. Then you can check your real email and use youtube at the same time without having the two directly linked. Problem (nearly) solved.

edited 3rd Mar '11 2:37:23 PM by storyyeller

Why do you need to log into Youtube anyways?

^ To revel in the stupidity of comments. Also, more importantly, to fave and upvote videos, which are very useful tools, and also to keep abreast of others' replies to one's comments.

^^ It's possible to link Google accounts? Link plz.

Though even if that were the case, that would provide confirmation beyond doubt (and beyond simple IP stalking) that the accounts belong to the same entity.

[Non Google Search Engine of choice] is your friend.

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/access-two-gmail-accounts-at-once-in.html

edited 3rd Mar '11 2:59:59 PM by storyyeller

And to upload videos....

Let's not ignore their "track you when you're using any page with Google Ads" shenanigans.

@storyyeller: Curiously, when I deny all cookies from that site, it hangs on "Read google-analytics.com".

(This is a known problem with some sites—deny all their cookies, and even though you didn't deny Google's cookies, the site will hang on Google Adsense with that message.)

To revel in the stupidity of comments. Also, more importantly, to fave and upvote videos, which are very useful tools, and also to keep abreast of others' replies to one's comments.

I'd imagine access to 18+ content is a rather big factor for a large chunk of the Internet too.

edited 3rd Mar '11 7:10:13 PM by Pykrete

Oh yeah, I forgot about that too.

Though I don't have too much use for it. Either that or the 18+ flag doesn't show up if you're already signed in. The only time I can remember seeing it in recent memory is the first ep of The Sacred Blacksmith—whose only sketchy content is, technically speaking, a single Panty Shot.

Yeah, I don't understand the logic either.

I think the reason I originally got a youtube account was so I could watch something I really wanted to watch that had been falsely labeled as 18+. The label has since been removed, but I'm sure as hell not losing my YT account.

I only have a google account for use of online persona, and therefore didn't think much about it.

Then, as a password measure, they asked for my phone number. This I have a problem with.

edited 3rd Mar '11 7:45:05 PM by Firestarter

The funny thing is how I have my Gmail addresses linked to each other for password recovery purposes.

Me too, which is kind of bad since one of the accounts has an insecure password.

Since I used a Hotmail address to register to You Tube (back in July 2006), it's only natural to link my You Tube account with that e-mail account (it's already receiving notifications of comment replies anyway). Why the hell would I need to register a new Gmail account anyway?

The downside is I now have the added inconvenience of being unable to access my professional Gmail account while logging in to You Tube. Guess it's time to try out Thunderbird.

Oh yeah. Google knows what the users want!

edited 3rd Mar '11 9:34:31 PM by MalagasyParrot

↑↑More importantly, if G Mail itself falls, all the accounts fall.

And for those with the "hang on Google Ads [or Google Analytics]" problem, the cause is likely not the cookies setting but the javascript one, and you need to block specific scripts from ever running (ga.js and __ut.js, I think) so that the site you are visiting ever finishes loading.

In particular if you so much hate those "__utm" cookies.

Also, beetches don't know about by Duck Duck Go, Vimeo or Dailymotion. W Hat the heck do you want the internet to comment on your videos anyway?

edited 4th Mar '11 5:45:41 AM by SilentReverence