Oh Google. I love you in so many ways, and in some ways I’m just amazed you can even get out of bed and get yourself dressed in the morning.
I’m a big fan of Google hosted email. You get that great Gmail experience, but with your own domain. It also incorporates Google Docs and Calendar right into the mix so companies can easily share documents and meetings. This is great.
But what happens if your company wants to use AdSense? Well, you have to “sign up” for a Google Account using your email. Then it will create an account for you. But wait, didn’t you already have an account? Yes. So now you have two accounts with the same email, and they are both google accounts, but they are not the same. The AdSense account will also hook you up with Google Docs, but its a whole different Docs than the other account. Confusing, huh?
Now add Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Voice, and Google Reader. They can only use one of the accounts as well.
Furthermore, lets say you had a thriving business and were actually making good money by participating in AdSense? Let’s say this account was under some Gmail address. Well, now you have this wonderful domain address, and you don’t really need that Gmail address. You want to transfer everything over. Well, too bad. You can’t. You just can’t. It’s not like you have to know the right people or something. Google just gets fixated on the email associated with these services and has no concept of ever changing that. They actually “recommend” you shut down the old AdSense account completely and start a new one. Oh, and by the way, the policy clearly states that you can’t have two AdSense accounts at the same time, so that should be a fun (and expensive) transition for you if you choose to make it.
This might seem odd to you. You might even try to search (using Google) for an explanation. But there isn’t one. Google is bizarrely silent on the issue. Well, you can imagine that one day they will have it sorted out, but for now, it’s just a big, and often expensive, mystery.
Update: I recently found that Google will allow you to change your email address as long as it is not an @gmail.com address. So the moral of the story is never ever sign up for AdSense with an @gmail.com address.
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