The Atalanta Principle

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.

Continue at her blog...

As always Gina Trapani is concise and clear in this run-down of the peculiar privileges and restrictions of each Google user type - why, for instance, you can't log into some Google services with your GApps login but others work fine.

Posted here as a reminder and also as a line in the sand so that we can see how Google user experience improves as they push into the very heart of your computing life (and move away from just being a white page with a search box... Remember when they were just that?)