The Google Dilemma

E-Mail.  It is probably our primary form of communication in the 21st Century.  Imagine, 20 years ago, we didn’t have an e-mail for the most part.  Today, it’s a big part of our lives.  Without e-mail, many of us would have a hard time surviving.  I mean, in my case, a major part of my ability to earn a living is fostered by e-mail.  If I didn’t have an e-mail I really could not do what I do for a living.  So, e-mail is a very important part of my life.  E-mail is not always fun or enjoyable, but it is necessary.

If somebody messes with our ability to use our e-mail effectively, well, it’s not a good thing.  Recently, I ran into some problems with my e-mail.  Let me give you some background information first, then in my next article, we’ll get into what the problem was, and how I solved it.

I have about 5 different e-mail addresses.  I suppose that these days, most of us have multiple addresses.  I have one primary e-mail address, though, which I use about 99% of the time, possibly more than 99%.  I have been using that exact e-mail address for the past 16 years.  I own the domain, and it is the first domain that I ever owned.  Some may wonder what a domain is, a domain is just an internet name.  For example, the domain of this site is “VirtualEarner.com”.   For this particular domain where my primary e-mail address is, and a couple of my other domains, I use Google services for your domain, which means that Google provides e-mail and other web apps under my domain name.  It is a free service for a low level of services or can be a paid service if you wish to have more premium features.  I have been using Google Apps (formerly known as Google Apps) for perhaps about 5 years now, as I recall.

A few months ago, when Google+ came out, I signed up as soon as I got an invitation.  As I have written here before, I get a fair amount of businesses from Social Networking sites, so I certainly wanted to join Google+ since it should turn into a major Social Site.

It was not long after I joined Google+ that Google came out with something else new for those using Google Apps.  You had to upgrade your Google Apps account.  Upgrade to what?  They didn’t really say, but you had to do it.  So, I made the upgrade.  When I did that, I found out that I had problems.  Firstly, under Google Apps, you could not have a Google Profile, and you could not join Google+.  Well, my Google+ account was under one of my Google Apps accounts!  I no longer had access to it.  I could not even view it anymore.

Another problem was that under the newly upgraded Google Apps accounts, you could no longer log in to multiple Google accounts simultaneously.  So, although I had 4 different Gmail accounts (2 Gmail, 2 through Google Apps) I could only log into one at a time.  My AdSense account was under one e-mail address, while the main e-mail address that I’ve been using for the past 16 years was through a different account.  So, in short, I could now check my daily AdSense earnings, or I could check my e-mail, but not both.  If I wanted to see how my AdSense earnings were doing for the day, I had to log out of my e-mail, log into AdSense, then log out of AdSense and return to e-mail.  Quite a pain!

Basically, Google had made it much more cumbersome to operate my business, and I needed to do something about it.  What did I do?  Was I able to resolve the problem?  Check in tomorrow for the conclusion and I can help you solve this problem if you are experiencing it as well.