What is the difference between accounts.google.com and myaccount.google.com

Question

(EDIT: Linked to https://support.google.com/accounts/thread/6363189?msgid=6363189)

I have my old Email address [email protected]

Initially I used an eight char password, but later I changed to an 11-char one.

Using the username X and my (new, so 11-char) password to sign into https://passwords.google.com/ I see that I have 2 google accounts listed:

Obviously the second one is X, the gmail account itself, and the first one is the implicitly created associated Google account that HOLDS it.

Both passwords are non-viewable, but I can see clearly they are (old) 8 cdots.

But the password I needed to get into this account is (new) 11 chars. What on earth is going on here?

---

Years later I created a fresh Gmail email account (Y), which has become my Master account.

Now I log in as Y thru https://passwords.google.com/
(this time I require 2FA using the Google authenticator app).

Ok, 7 associated accounts this time. Let's have a look!

(NOTE: The items behind the 4 grey boxes are temporary test accounts that are unused).

There are three things I don't understand here:

1. Y and Y@gmail.com are both absent. This seems incongruous. Y is not exhibiting the same behaviour as X was. X was self-referencing (albeit with mismatching password-lengths). Y is not!

2. X appears in THREE locations now.

   • [email protected] (under accounts.google.com) with (old) 8-char password

   • X (under accounts.google.com) with NEW password

   • [email protected] (under accounts.google.com and myaccount.google.com) with NEW password

Could somebody explain this behaviour, and help me unpick this giant tangle?

I want to get a clean account structure.

Answer 1

This question has been answered by Google representative.

Please follow the link at the top of the question to see the answer.

For reference,

To summarise the Stack Exchange entry: You have multiple usernames and passwords visible when you go to passwords.google.com One account has both X and [email protected] saved The other account (Y) has everything by Y saved. Is that accurate? These are not sub-accounts, nor are they "bound" in any way to your Google account. They are just saved credentials for accounts where you signed inm with Chrome set to save them. You want to know why you have both X and [email protected], with different passwords. The entries are created when you sign in through Chrome and have it set to save passwords. You can sign in to a Gmail account using the bare username or the full email address, but the saved password will only get updated when you sign in the same way. (Chrome's password manager does not know that they are usernames for the same account. For the same reason, you may have other entries for the same account, if you sign in using other alternate usernames.)
You want to know why Y is not saving its own password. That is a security feature. Google will not save the password for the account currently signed in to Chrome sync, because it will unlock all of the other passwords. This restriction did not always apply, so some older accounts may have their own saved passwords. It is also possible that the password was saved when it was not the sync account, but the profile was later synced to the account and kept the saved password.
You can, and should, delete any unneeded entries, especially if they have old, invalid passwords.