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Understanding Single Sign-On in Google

Posted on 03. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey in Tips, Tutorials

Multiple outlets are reporting today that single sign-on is being rolled out to all Google users. But what does that mean? For starters, if you’ve ever been challenged with having to sign in and sign out of multiple accounts, this feature was built specifically for you.

Now that Google Apps is being used more commonly for business, there is more use of Google services that require a sign in. If you have your own personal account, and a business one, you can see very quickly how single sign-on can save you time without having to constantly log out and log in to various accounts.

Now, when you go to your account settings page, you can see that there is an option to switch to single sign-on; right now the default is for it to be switched off.

You’ll then be shown an informational page about single sign-on.

Of note here is that there are a limited set of Google services that are currently offering single sign-on.

You are then required to check off some boxes to make sure that you understand what you’re doing.

Once you’ve saved the changes, you’ll notice that your account name in the upper right has become a link; you can click on it and sign into multiple accounts. You are then able to seamlessly switch between accounts by using this menu.

That’s going to save some time for sure.

UPDATE: At the time of this post the feature had not been rolled out to everyone; now the Gmail Blog is announcing everyone can use the feature.

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