14 DAY TRIAL // YouTube is launching a brand new feature, support for Google Accounts. No this isn't 2006, YouTube is only now launching support for Google Accounts, more specifically, it is only now enabling Google Account users to log into YouTube.
Again, if you've ever used YouTube, you'd say that this has been the case for years, but there is a difference, until now, users had to link up their YouTube and Google accounts.
But in the eyes of both sites, they were still two separate accounts, even though, for the user, there was no discernible difference.
"If you are logged in to your existing Google Account, you can now choose to personalize your YouTube experience, where YouTube will suggest videos and channels based on what you’ve watched and liked in the past," Brett Hobbs, Software Engineer at Google, wrote.
"You can also 'like' videos, purchase or rent a latest release from YouTube.com/Movies, add videos to your own 'Watch Later' queue, share videos across various platforms, connect YouTube with one of your social networks, as well as access and manage your watch history," he added.
That all sounds great, but you'd have to wonder, why then do you need a YouTube account anyway. Well, if you also have YouTube account, you will be able to upload videos, comment on other clips and generally interact with the site in ways not possible with only a Google Account.
But it gets better, you see, most YouTube accounts are actually Google Accounts. Anyone that has signed up to the video site after May 2009 has had a Google account created for them automatically, even if they only use YouTube.
But creating a Google Account does not automatically create a YouTube account, like it doesn't automatically create a Gmail account or a Google+ profile. The simplest way of explaining this is that Google accounts provide identity and authorization, where as a YouTube account is your profile on the site.