Login and Google Apps RANT

[jay]

Hello All,

Please allow me to rant for a few minutes about some very annoying
problems I've recently had with logins and authentication. Hopefully
somebody at Google will notice and forward the issue on to somebody
with some power to do something.

A short preface: I use Google Apps for Business and after prompting,
foolishly "upgraded my account infrastructure". This has created a
problem where I can no longer be simultaneously be logged into my
Google Apps domain hosted email (j...@jaykyburz.com) and my Google
account (kybur...@gmail.com). According to enterprise support this
change cannot be rolled back.

Whats really annoying is that now that I'm logged into my email, I can
no longer be simultaneously be logged into my App Engine Applications.
To work around this I simply use 2 browsers. Chrome for email and
Firefox for everything else.

The problem Im concerned about is that when I'm logged into my email,
and try and log into my App Engine Application I'm asked whether or
not I want to share my email address with the application. The only
options are yes or no. THERE IS NO OPTION TO CHANGE ACCOUNTS OR CREATE
A NEW ACCOUNT.

example: http://blight.ironhelmet.com/static/LoginError.PNG

If you choose "no" the login fails. Useres are expected to "just know"
that they need to go and log out of this account somewhere else before
they can log into my applications.

Also: My Apps don't use Federated Logins because, similarly once
logged in there is no way for me to offer my useres a way to log out.

I don't know how many of my useres are in a similar situation to me,
but I this is a very poor interface. I need my customers to be able to
create new google accounts for just my applications. I don't want my
useres to have to trust me with thier google account or email. It has
to be OK for them to create a throw away account for just my
applications.

When I'm logged into my Google Apps domain hosted email
(j...@jaykyburz.com) and I visit Google Groups, I'm simply presented
with an error, but at least I have button that prompts me to sign out
of my current account. THIS WOULD BE PREFERABLE TO WHAT WE HAVE NOW.

example:http://blight.ironhelmet.com/static/LoginError2.PNG

Thanks for reading.

Jay.

[Gopal Patel]

+1. custom login pages/sign up links redirection etc are pretty old
problems that haven't been solved...

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[Jeff Schnitzer]

One thing that will help you is that google added the ability to be
logged into multiple accounts simultaneously. You can switch between
them with a dropdown. You have to turn this on in Account Settings
somewhere, but after that it works pretty well.

I have a bigger complaint, although this may not be the place to do
it. I recently began the transition from a gmail account to a google
apps account. Almost everything works properly... except google
groups.

Apparently "groups" is a premium feature unavailable to Google Apps
Standard. I understand they want to make the ability to create
enterprise groups part of the paid package, but they have effectively
blocked out participation in public groups (like this one). Right now
I have to maintain my old gmail account just to read and respond to
appengine and objectify email - LAME!

Looking at it from a different angle, my opensource projects that use
Google Groups have now blocked out Google Apps Standard users. This
is broken, and a compelling reason to migrate off Google Groups.

Jeff