Google is testing support for multiple accounts

Jul 14, 2010 14:56 GMT  ·  By

One of the best parts of having a Google account is that it works for all of the company’s products and can also be used to log into third-party sites in plenty of places. Yet there are users that have multiple Google accounts for various reasons. Unfortunately, Google, like practically any other website out there, doesn’t provide for this and it can be a real pain to manage the different accounts. Now, it looks like the company is working on a new feature which will enable users to be logged into several accounts at a time in the same browser.

According the unofficial Google Operating System blog, Google is testing the functionality with a few users with the likely intent of releasing it for everyone in the future. For now, those than ca access it will be able to turn on the feature through their Google Accounts page.

If they do so, it will allow them to sign into different accounts in different browser tabs. For example, they can have two Gmail accounts opened concomitantly without one interfering with the other. The feature only works for a handful of Google sites for now, Calendar, Code, Docs, Gmail, Reader and Sites.

There is a caveat for Gmail users, they won’t be able to use the offline feature if they enable multiple-account logins. The products that don’t support the feature yet, will default to the account users have logged in first.

Google advices users that want to sign in with different accounts for the services that don’t support the feature yet to either log out of all their accounts and then login with the one they want or use a different browser. Of course, there is also the option of using the private browsing features in Chrome, Firefox and most other web browsers, as Google Operating System points out.