Force Google+ to login using correct user

Question

I have multiple Google App accounts. I have one for work and one(or more) for personal use.

Whenever I visit http://plus.google.com, it will attempt to open Google Plus for an arbitrary account. (Technically, it seems to use the first account I signed into after getting logged out. So if I logout of all accounts, then sign into account B, A, then C, it appears to use account B. For work-related reasons, I need to have my work account as my first account so that I can easily access Google Drive, Calendar, Mail, etc.)

The problem is that my work administrator does not allow Google Plus. So whenever I visit http://plus.google.com, I see the following error message:

Google+ is not available for your organization (groupon.com). Please contact your administrator to enable this service."

Unlike most Google pages, there's no dropdown menu to choose the correct account.

I can work around the problem by manually tacking on a login index to the end of the url. So for example, if the account I want to use was the second account I logged into, I can do http://plus.google.com/u/1 to access it. Or http://plus.google.com/u/2 for the third account, etc. It's kind of annoying though, and the number always changes depending on the order in which I logged into accounts.

Is there a more graceful way to visit Google Plus for my personal account than manually typing in a specific index number into the url?

Answer 1

The cause of this problem is this: A browser cookie indicates which Google account you're logged into. When you're logged into your work account then go to Google+, G+ tries to access that account's Google+ service, which your company has disabled. If it wasn't disabled, you'd still be connecting to the wrong Google+ account.

Google had a high priority objective for years to make multi-login work on the web. It still doesn't work, and it does not seem forthcoming now that workaround #3 (below) works so well. To get out of the multi-login quagmire you can:

1. Log out of your work account and log in to your personal account when you want to access Google+. Then do the reverse to access your work email.

2. Use a Chrome incognito window (or the Safari or Firefox equivalent) for one of the accounts. This will work, but every time you close the incognito window, it'll log out, and it only works for 2 accounts at a time. It's only a partial solution but it requires no setup.

3. Use a separate Chrome profile per login account. (This is what Google employees use to juggle their google.com, gmail.com, and maybe Google apps accounts.)

   • Create a Chrome profile for each account.
   • In each Chrome profile, login to its associated Google account.
   • You'll open separate Chrome windows, one (or more) per profile.
   • The profile can sync Chrome settings to that account across all your computers.
   • Tip: Use a different Chrome theme for each profile so you can see which one is which.

4. Use a different browser for each Google account. Between Safari, Chrome, Chromium, & Firefox, you can keep 4 accounts distinct.

Answer 2

A kind of solution I created for myself, is this:

I added a bookmarklet that prompts for a URL, and then shows the Google Account Chooser. After you choose an account, you'll be redirected to the desired URL with the selected user.

The "script":

javascript:(function(){ window.open("https://accounts.google.com/AccountChooser?service=wise&continue="+prompt("Enter a Google service link to open with the Google Account Chooser")); })();