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I'm looking to migrate my current account, created years ago when I was a child and with a badly unprofessional nickname, to another more serious Google account.

My current account is connected to many services and has also a Google Drive billing associated to. I have Photos on Google Photos and a Google+ Profile with pages. Moreover I have bought Android Apps on Google Play Store.

The Google Takeout tool is less useful then before, is not possible anymore to migrate automatically the Google+ connections and circles.

For what I can understand the situation will take a lot of effort; in any case what would the best strategy be to migrate completely a Google account to another?

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Was your original Google account created with a gmail address (eg youngster@gmail.coem)? If so, then I don't believe that there is one solution for this. Instead, you need to transfer ownership of the artifacts created by each individual service to the new account. This is more than just taking a copy of the data and making it available to the 2nd account (what Takeout can help with), it's about giving control of the orignal data to the new account.

The way to do this is different for each service (and it's possible that there are services that don't have a method for doing it. Ones I know something about:

  • You can use Picasa web albums to transfer ownership of photos (includes Google Photos and Google+ Photos) to the new account. The last time I looked, it was only possible to do this once in the lifetime of the albums - so make sure you get it right the first time.
  • Feedburner - transferring ownership of feeds is very easy, read about it in their help.
  • Gmail - is the one service where you don't transfer ownership, just use Takeout to tranfer the contents.
  • Blogger - itself is simple enough to transfer blog ownership, but the problems arrive if you want to move photos as well: the links may bread.

On the other hand, if your original account name is not a gmail address (eg youngster@oldISPmailService.com), then you can simply:

  • Create a new professional email account somewhere (eg
    grown-up@myDomain.com)
  • Switch the primary email address associated with the Google account to the new email.
  • Set a the display name for your Google account to something professional.
  • Check the display names in any associated services which have their own separate profiles (eg Blogger did, and I think still does)
  • Keep logging in to Google using the original account name, but confident that no one else is seeing it any more.
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  • What about purchased Google play apps? I've to repurchase them? And Google+? I just create a new profile and transfer the circles? – DiTTiD Jul 24 '15 at 9:20
  • Sorry, I don't know about those ones. Hopefully someone else can comment about them - or maybe searching their help for the phrase "transfer" might yield something. – MaryC.fromNZ Jul 24 '15 at 11:10
  • @SolidSnake Google Play purchases can't be transferred from one account to another. – Rubén Jul 24 '15 at 11:45
  • support.google.com/accounts/answer/58582?hl=en – Rubén Jul 24 '15 at 11:54
  • @MaryC.fromNZ thanks for you effort of answering. The task is quite critical so I'm organizing myself to do what you suggest. Thanks, for now. – DiTTiD Jul 30 '15 at 23:06
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In my experience, when I needed to move my Gmail, Drive, Contacts, and other apps data, I ended up using g-transfer. It was a way better option than Google Takeout (as you said, there are even more problems with Takeout now--and g-transfer seems to have gotten it right so far).

The only problem is that if you have linked stuff to your Google Play store or billing etc, you will need to do that stuff individually. It can be a bit of a pain, but seriously when g-transfer takes care of the other stuff, it will make it much less daunting. It puts a copy of your account data into another Google account and takes like a minute to do.

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  • At the end I still did not performed the backup. I will give g-trasfer a try. – DiTTiD Aug 22 '16 at 9:55
  • Hi Preston. I notice that you and perhaps a few of your colleagues are promoting this product in various answers. While it does provide an answer the questions in most cases, we tend to frown upon these subtle promotions of products, particularly when a pattern arises. I would ask that you disclose any affiliation with the product in your answer and refrain from using answers as a means of promotion. Thanks! – jonsca♦ Sep 1 '16 at 22:53

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