First, it almost never remembers what account you used with what service. If I do some Google Cloud stuff under my work account, I don't want Google Maps using my work account, or vice versa. The list of accounts in the upper right corner, and what's signed in/out, seems completely random and broken.
The second problem is that Google's various apps are wildly inconsistent in how they deal with multiple accounts. Some (like Maps) have apparently been "modernized". Others (like BigQuery; I've had issues with Google Drive, too) don't understand multiple accounts at all. It doesn't matter that you sign into a work account. Open that app and it will use some other account.
A sign they've not mastered this at all is that it doesn't work at the URL level. You can bookmark a Google Docs document, for example, and then switch your accounts. Going to the bookmark (or just going back) to the Docs page gives you a "permission denied" error because you're using the wrong account. Same thing with sharing URLs — if someone at work sends me a Google Docs URL, it's bound to not work because it'll try to use what I try to keep as my default account, which is my personal one. Sometimes I just munge the "authuser=1" part in the URL.
It's amazing that a Google app can't simply resolve the union of identities you're signed in as. I have two accounts, work and personal, and one of them has access, after all.
I dont want this, it's better to be explicit with the accounts. However they are just using cookies and Chrome gives each "profile" a separate cookie container which works well and I prefer it to the mess it would be at the tab level. I have separate window profiles for work and personal and can keep everything (including passwords) completely separate.
I use Safari, which doesn't have profile handling at all. The web should not rely on clumsy browser hacks. Chrome profiles are way too coarse-grained — all the settings and state (history, bookmarks, etc.) are separate. It also interacts badly with everything else on a computer. If I click on a Slack link to a Google document, then nothing knows which Chrome window to open it in.
Google's mistake was the account switcher. Supporting multiple accounts is fine, but pretending they support concurrent logins is nonsensical.
But I have no choice to use multipel Google accounts, since my company uses Google Apps or G-Suite or Google For Work or whatever it is called today, and I'm consulting for a third company that also does this.
I just setup multiple profiles in chrome which is one thing it seems to do better than FF imo. You can select a profile in the top right corner. Everything about them is separate. cookies, history, extensions , theme so I give each one a different theme make it clear what profile I'm using.
in FF afaict you can only use one at a time and you have to choose at launch
Your comment has convinced me to do this. This is pretty fantastic. It was driving me nuts being signed into both work and personal gmails to access either my files or adwords. Not to mention YouTube which would open under the work account sometimes or drive. Plus now I can rip out all the work bookmarks and shove that into a work only profile.
My only concern now is with using multiple devices. Do I just sign into to both profiles on each device? I only worry because there was a big snafu that occurred with their password manager that synced nothing and everything disappeared. (I no longer trust google with that stuff).
Chrome profiles are too coarse-grained: Not only is the entire window associated with that profile but each profile also has separate settings, histories, bookmarks, everything. All I'd want here are separate cookie spaces.
Firefox profiles are similar to Chrome's. But the container tabs that people are talking about in this thread are better than Chrome profiles. They're per tab, and last I checked they only separate out cookies and local storage.
I have this problem with JIRA: ever since Google authentication was enabled there I can not login on two separate JIRA instances with the same browser.
This kind of defeats the purpose of multiple accounts.
Remember, we started to have them to separate our work/home/personal lives, to build separate digital profiles that companies (like Google) store on their servers. Now you beg Google to recognize and unify them (which I guess they have almost done already by themselves).
I'm not begging anything of Google, but I would want them to make this work better.
Google accounts are not just about data and personalities, but also about permissions. As long as I'm "logged into" multiple accounts, it should be able to map the content I'm trying to see to an account. Or at least offer to switch to that account. For example, if I'm trying to view a company document, but my default account is my personal account, then I don't want to see an often obscure "permission to view denied" error, which always freaks me out and makes me think I've been locked out or something.
Better yet, build this badly-needed auth stuff into the browser and allow apps to negotiate access with the browser.
Yeah, but they probably get punished by managers for implementing unnecessary features. And that's probably why, even if we have one, the multiple accounts feature sucks so much.
First, it almost never remembers what account you used with what service. If I do some Google Cloud stuff under my work account, I don't want Google Maps using my work account, or vice versa. The list of accounts in the upper right corner, and what's signed in/out, seems completely random and broken.
The second problem is that Google's various apps are wildly inconsistent in how they deal with multiple accounts. Some (like Maps) have apparently been "modernized". Others (like BigQuery; I've had issues with Google Drive, too) don't understand multiple accounts at all. It doesn't matter that you sign into a work account. Open that app and it will use some other account.
A sign they've not mastered this at all is that it doesn't work at the URL level. You can bookmark a Google Docs document, for example, and then switch your accounts. Going to the bookmark (or just going back) to the Docs page gives you a "permission denied" error because you're using the wrong account. Same thing with sharing URLs — if someone at work sends me a Google Docs URL, it's bound to not work because it'll try to use what I try to keep as my default account, which is my personal one. Sometimes I just munge the "authuser=1" part in the URL.
It's amazing that a Google app can't simply resolve the union of identities you're signed in as. I have two accounts, work and personal, and one of them has access, after all.
I might consider FF just to work around this.