Why YSK: A Google account is not the same as a Gmail account, and you don’t need to create a new Gmail email account to have a Google account.
I’ve spoken to many different people who equate a Google account to a Gmail account. This is not the case. Unfortunately, this leads to many new Gmail accounts being created, solely because they think that they need to have a Gmail in order to access other Google services.
Here’s the gist:
A Google account gives you access to Google services like Sheets, Docs, Calendar, Drive, Photos, Gmail, YouTube, etc.
A Gmail account is an email service account with Google. When you create a Gmail, you also create a Google account by default.
However, the reverse is not true. If you create a Google account (with a non-Gmail email address), it does not automatically give you a Gmail account.
If you already have an email account with another provider, you can use that as your Google account.
For example: Let’s say your email is jane@example.com. Rather than creating jane@gmail.com, you can opt to create a Google account with jane@example.com and avoid creating an account for Gmail.
Unfortunately, Google tries to get you to create a Gmail account during the process of creating a Google account. (see image).
It’s important to differentiate this and prevent people from registering new Gmail accounts unnecessarily.
For example: Let’s say your email is [email protected].
YSK: These domains are reserved for use in examples:
Why YSK: Using these instead of made-up domain names reduces the chance of confusing readers, eliminates the possibility of phishing attacks, and avoids sending unwanted traffic to made-up domains if they happen to belong to someone.
Nice to see this as a standard, thanks. Edited to reflect this.
What’s the harm in creating the gmail account with your google account?
No real harm, but it’s one more account to manage/worry about.
Flipside is that relying on a singular account is also bad, as now it’s a single point of failure in regards to security.
You’re making a new account either way. Whether you login with a gmail or other email address makes no difference to it being a Google account. Making a gmail you ALSO get another email, which you can promptly ignore until some possible point in the future where it may be useful.
I mean if you make a gmail account just for your Google account, you’ll either have to log into your Gmail account to check emails or miss potential important emails related to your account, which you would get if they were sent to your main email.
These companies typically use AI analyses of uploaded files to prevent people from doing stuff like upload child porn. Unfortunately, they can’t distinguish between “pedo shit” and “picture of naked child with a nasty rash emailed to a doctor”.
Several people have lost years of email because they uploaded pictures like those to OneDrive. By separating accounts, you can keep your files and your email separate.
There have also been instances of people attacking others by inviting them to WhatsApp groups (which still isn’t disabled by default) and spamming a bunch of illegal shit. If you have WhatsApp set to auto backup, you may just end up sending that illegal shit to Google, who in turn detects it and kicks you out of your account.
For this reason, I think it’s a good idea to separate any cloud storage accounts from your email accounts.
Yes, but what does change when I register both accounts with a Gmail address?
In theory you get the benefit of them banning your Drive Google account and leaving your email Google account alone. Google will probably link the two, but I don’t think the ban will cross accounts automatically.
I suppose “harm” can be subjective in this context, and there are already some good replies here.
One more thing to add to the list that I’d consider harmful in creating a Gmail account is all of the privacy issues that come with having a Gmail account.
Out of respect for my recipients and myself, I wouldn’t want all of our emails being read.
We can go down the rabbit hole of “Email is inherently insecure anyways,” but that’s a separate discussion.
Damn. I worked for Google for almost 10 years and I had no idea.
Well why not use a gmail so they dont get a personal mail account or something
I wouldn’t know. My Google account is older than YouTube, and GMail was just getting out of the beta stage. Smartphones didn’t exist yet, nor did all these modern fancy apps.
So the signup process was totally different back then. And when they acquired YouTube, that meant I automatically had a YouTube account, but oddly enough I had to use a different username than my Google account, to avoid conflicts as they merged.
I only use Google services on the devices I leave at home, my mobile devices will never see the likes of Google though. They don’t have any business tracking all my activity, so as far as their systems know, I haven’t left home in over 3 years LOL!
Except your google devices at home see your local wifi and the same degoogled devices are logged on multiple wifi netowkrs throughout each day so they still track you.
Yeah, I get that. That’s why my non-Googled devices are not connected to my home WiFi.
Already covered captain 👍
Nice, are they linux phones?
Yes and no. All Android phones run some variation of Linux actually.
My more private devices are still on their original stock Android 11, I just never signed into Google, and never activated location services.
F-Droid for the win!
Yes and no. All Android phones run some variation of Linux actually.
At this point, that’s kind of like saying Macs run a variation of BSD. It’s technically true, but not practically useful in most cases.
They still ain’t got my info though. Hell, their algorithm’s best guess still can’t figure me out.
I have two completely different isolated internet services, one for home and one for the road. Guess which one ain’t tracking me…
😆😆 good I haven’t leaved home for over a month
Same with Microsoft. I have a Microsoft account for a Gmail address, but Microsoft doesn’t realise that they should disable Outlook, leading to the funny weird situation where you can log in to Outlook.com with a Gmail address and enter a completely useless empty mailbox. I bet Google has the same quirk.
Alright, I guess I could enter IMAP or POP details and use Outlook as some kind of email client by proxy, but that’s an even worse idea.
So is this why I’m able to receive new emails from the Google Group I joined with my non-Gmail account, but not actually access the Google group to see past messages to the group?
Sounds like it. It happens with other Google services too. Someone could share a GDoc to your non-Gmail email, but if that non-Gmail email isn’t a Google account, then you won’t be able to access the doc/comments/whatever else (depending on the doc permissions, of course).
Can we use Google email service with a custom domain email? As far as I am aware, it requires some Google service suite.
Also, what happens when you lose access to the custom domain? Do they verify the domain ownership periodically, or do you just own it?"
It’s totally possible to do without the suite! With my free Gmail account and my domain registered through cloudflare, I have a custom email address for just the cost of the domain. I have the custom email set as an alias in Gmail, and Cloudflare does routing.
Google will typically ask you to add a DNS entry, or an HTML tag to the home page. This will usually prove ownership. If you lose access, I think this mechanism should automatically kick you off at some point.
They used to offer free domain services, I think, or at least very cheap subscriptions. I think they’ve moved away from those since.
You can use https://forwardemail.net It works really well. I can send and receive on a custom domain with my Gmail.
