New Google Accounts Require Gmail and Google+

I'm rather disturbed by these troubling trends that Google has taken. I'm not interested in G+ nor do I want to be involved in the battle between Google and Facebook for the greater number of users. I enjoy using some of their services but it's getting to the point where I'd rather pay for email and look for an alternative RSS solution.<p>At some point Google is going to be investigated for this. Like MS, they'll probably get away with this in the US because Google is US based and they let businesses get away with anything, but the EU will hammer them.

I've been struggling with the tradeoffs in keeping Google as my email (among other things) provider. I own a few VPS's and have plenty of hardware that could serve as a private server. What has kept me from hosting my email up to this point is the fear of being inadvertently blacklisted by something like Spamhaus, downtime from Comcast (my ISP) making service intermittent, and generally having the email server management take over my life. In short, the same issues that affect many here by evidence of the recent chart of Y Combinator companies' hosting decisions (<a href="http://jpf.github.com/domain-profiler/ycombinator.html?2011" rel="nofollow">http://jpf.github.com/domain-profiler/ycombinator.html?2011</a>).<p>I could host my own email on my VPS, but going through the trouble of that - it seems to make sense to just go ahead and host on a box I fully control.<p>To this point I admit I have had no issues with gmail or Google apps, both of which I use. But the landscape seems to be changing and I'm curious if anyone is considering migrating to their own hardware and what tools, etc. they are employing to make that process easily manageable as well as effective. I use email for sensitive business discussions, but the security required is tempered by the obvious fact that if the email doesn't get there, it's less than worthless.<p>I do have PGP setup, and I thought that this would be a good tradeoff while using a third party provider - but it is nearly impossible to keep partners and clients active in using it, if they use it at all.<p>The concept of the Freedombox (freedomboxfoundation.org) seems interesting, but academic at this point.<p>Anyone running their personal email servers care to comment on the overhead? Would a simple Postfix, Dovecot, Roundcube install with Spamassassin suffice? What are the pitfalls? Not worth the tradeoff of using Google Apps?<p>I'm thinking about keeping my websites on a VPS and using a MX record to point to a private, dedicated email server I keep in my house or other private property. Anyone running a similar setup?

It's somewhat troubling to me due to the `real name' requirement of Google+. Seems I can't create a semi-anonymous email at gmail anymore?

I'd say that by doing this they will gain more users to G+ than they will not gain for Gmail or other services due to concerns about G+.<p>On the other hand, being able to sign up with an arbitrary email address has always lead to issues once/if you switch to Google Apps and intend to share local parts.<p>Google has no obligation to provide G+/GMail-less accounts and I'm sure there is a lot of technical and business reasons for coupling them. As it's their service, that's what we get.

I remember AltaVista's decline into a "portal" -- to the point where it was hard to spot the search box on their home page, and the honest results in the "results" -- and Google's arrival on the scene with super-clean, relevant search. I feel like history is repeating itself _in a fashion_.<p>Who are the rising stars in general-purpose web search?

Does this mean you can't make throwaway email addresses anymore not linked to your real name since google doesn't allow alias on G+ you always be at risk of deletion?

I predict Google and Facebook, successful as they are, will provide the greatest motivation for the growth of Diaspora. People in charge of so much centralized data will be unable to resist using it. They are in an arms race.<p>Diaspora is small now, but the motivation to use it will only keep growing.

I am not a fan of this move. It makes me feel like I did when Microsoft starting including Internet Explorer in Windows, but instead of forced middleware bundling, we have forced service bundling.

Bah. I've been happily using Google services with a non-Google email for years now, but when I created a gmail account for that ID, all my notifications from all google products (e.g. google calendar notifications, notifications from other Google products like Google Code) suddenly started going to the gmail mailbox instead of the address they'd been going to all along.<p>Fortunately I was able to delete the gmail account to reverse this, but it was relatively difficult to find the "turn off gmail" button. And if all new accounts get gmail, they may stop letting you turn off gmail at all.

Google is going to do whatever it takes to drive people from that competing advertising network known as Facebook.<p>Have you done a search for "Facebook" on Google recently? Notice the gigantic ad for Google+ on the right?<p><a href="http://img576.imageshack.us/img576/199/screenshot20120120at110.png" rel="nofollow">http://img576.imageshack.us/img576/199/screenshot20120120at1...</a><p>If that isn't anti-competitive, I don't know what is. If I had a competing service, I couldn't advertise for "facebook" on Google, but Google can stick a gigantic ad for their competing service there?

The "Delete profile and Google+ features" link in the Google "Account Overview" has also been removed, so it looks like you can no longer get rid of your Google+ account after the fact as outlined here:<p><a href="http://www.troublefixers.com/how-to-delete-google-plus-or-google-account-safely-without-deleting-google-or-gmail-account/" rel="nofollow">http://www.troublefixers.com/how-to-delete-google-plus-or-go...</a>

Google is the new Yahoo! now.

Google's doing a great job of fooling the media with the G+ hype. I just hope they keep themselves in check internally and know that G+, as it stands, is a shit product with little adoption once you take away the <i>forced</i> adoption.<p>If they don't care about it and just want to pump up their signup numbers, heck just make every google.com visitor a G+ member automatically. Oh wait, they are beginning to do just that...

Old create-account link requires you already have a non-gmail email address. You can't create a gmail account from scratch without the new form (with G+).

Another desperate attempt to get more G+ users :)

<i>Until now, creating a Google account was quite simple.</i><p>You don't usually see websites boasting that their processes <i>used</i> to be simpler.

Wasn't there a big huge DOJ case a while back about a company using one monopoly to try and create another? I forget.