Buggy Adsense->g Account Migration, Steer clear! Options

[eKstreme]

Anyone trying to log into their AdSense account for the past few days would know that Google is forcing trying to get everyone to migrate to Google Accounts instead of plain-vanilla AdSense accounts.

However, there is a serious bug that's annoying at the very least and worrying at best: I attempted a migration yesterday by setting up a Google Account with the same credentials as my AdSense account - I wasn't going to change the email address and password just yet. It got accepted and everything went smoothly. However, every time I log in now, it asks me to migrate the login again with this stupid (yes, stupid) message:



Both red squares hide the same exact email address. One welcomes me and one says if "you're the person who just logged in, please go back and log in again". Sheesh. It does this every time.

Also note another sloppiness: why does the continue button have a quote? As far as I can tell it's intentional. The HTML has this:

CODE

value="Continue ""

Actually all of the migration continue buttons have this.

While I'm at it: What's the difference between and AdSense account and a Google Account? My AdSense Account always left me logged into the *.google.com services (as evidenced by the top right hand side of the page) unless I explicitly logged out. Google's been trying to force feed me an account for ages and now they want to force feed me something different but looks the same? Why should I care?

Sounds like a very botched roll out to me.

Color me annoyed and angry. It's a dark shade of green with some yellow for good measure.

Pierre

This post has been edited by eKstreme: Feb 22 2008, 03:25 AM

[A.N.Onym]

Google Account and Google AdSense accounts are different creatures.

Google Account encompasses access to all Google services, including AdSense.

Google AdSense account only lets you in Google Adsense.

I see no reason for G to ask you to migrate again, if you have already upgraded Google AdSense account.

What's more: you'll need to upgrade your other Google accounts (Webmaster Tools, Reader, Analytics, etc) to Google Account to be able to manage everything from it - or G will be bugging you to do it.

Technically, having one Google Account helps you to use all the services without having to login to every one of them. I do have access to about 12 services, even though I don't use all of them at a time. It is pretty nice.

What I don't like, though, is that having Google Account enables you Google to use Web History, which Google no doubt uses for its evil purposes.

Also, they have changed URLs from subdomain.google.com to google.com/service-name. This may or may not be related to creating the main Google Account, but I don't really see if URL matter at all in this case (except for Google, maybe).

P.S. I don't see a reason to botch a button that way. I want to doubt its a typo, but does it look like one!

This post has been edited by A.N.Onym: Feb 22 2008, 03:43 AM

[rynert]

I got annoyed when it said if I already have an google account and could use that - but when I tried it wouldn't let me.

I have asked google before about merging my existing adsense (personal email) with my google account (business email) and was told it was not possible - I could set up a new account, but that would lose all the history.

I thought that this was the 'fix' for that - but it seems a catch-22.... well, as long as the (kinda hard to spot) 'skp' link is there no harm done

[rynert]

I chased Google about this... it seems this change was supposed to (finally) allow me to merge my Adsense acount with a Google Account that already had Adwords on - it didn't work.

However, they did something at their end and asked me to try again, and it worked

So, at last, all my business Google services have the same login

[dazzlindonna]

rynert, I wish I'd waited for the fix then, because I've had the same problem as you. They wouldn't let me migrate to my Google account because it already existed (due to it being used for Adwords). So I had to create a new Google account to migrate to. Totally ridiculous. The whole chase your tail thing was ridiculous the last time they made us do this, and like you, I thought this time around would be the time it would work flawlessly, but I was oh so wrong.

This was usability gone very, very wrong.

I wonder how difficult it would be to migrate again to the account I wanted to migrate to in the first place. Hmm...probably impossible, or more frustrating that it would be worth.

[DrPete]

They haven't done a good job of explaining the consequences of the unified accounts. I had to create a new account for my AdWords client management; Google wouldn't let me use my standard account, as it was already tied to an AdWords account. That account was inactive and I'd be happy to remove it, but I can't. So, now I have a unified Google account for everything except my client management, and every time I log into that, I get logged out of Gmail.

[eKstreme]

Could all this be a ploy so that Google can suddenly announce "Hey look here everybody! We have a billion user accounts! We must be great! Love us!"?

Or more parsimoniously, Google's engineers responsible for this bit of the code messed up badly.

Cynically yours,
Pierre

[dazzlindonna]

Since this same problem was around a couple of years ago (guessing at the timeline there) when they forced us to do it the first time, I'd say it's just a case of "continuously messing up badly".

[rynert]

Just realised that both email addresses now have full access to the same Adsense account... can't see anyway to boot the old one from the account...

Still... at least I am closer...

Will send another e-mail...