Google has announced a new feature – being able to merge work and personal Google+ accounts – that assumes you have both a work and a personal Google+ account that you use.
Google TakeOut.
And this is not a new type of food or drink service, it is the ability to remove duplicate Google+ accounts by combining into one.
But we advise caution and consideration of whether it is indeed wise to do so, as once done the move cannot be undone. Such a move might be helpful for consultants and freelance workers for whom a mix of business and family life is useful, and the when you are in control of your work, but more caution might be wise for those employed by a company.
Google+ has circles, designed to allow you to keep your separate groups of contacts separate, but they are still accessed by Google and information such as preferences and interests can cross between the different circles. When ‘in family mode’ you may not wish to be bombarded by advertisements related to your work circles, and when ‘at work’ it may not be appropriate to receive ads more suited to your family circles.
If work and home use different email addresses you will only be able to carry on using the primary email address to login – so you will lose access from the other. Be careful of inadvertently assigning home content to your employer, or falling foul of employment contracts by assigning any work related content to yourself.
For those who have a Google+ profile that is not used, there is now the option to ‘Delete your entire Google+ profile’ – and again this is non reversible. You might be better waiting. Google+ is still small but Google are investing heavily in this product and it could grow very quickly in the next six months as it has a natural advantage in the search results. Watch this space….
For Google Takeout the Google recommendations are take a backup of the data and proceed with caution. There are reported cases of people having difficulty with this and losing data.
Our advice is to proceed with caution when combining home and work accounts – you may later wish they had remained separate.
