[eliasmacpherson]

My point is that 'most people' I refer to didn't create different google accounts, they created a singular gmail account. You seem to be focused on 'active user' accounts, the google account with gmail is now 'contagious' and is automatically signing you up for stuff that you never signed up for before: e.g. youtube.

[rmrm]

GMail users are the biggest users of "other" Google services around, because of the integrated login. Because of the "contagion" working over time.

Most normal people like that behavior. I had all these Google contacts on my computer, now they're on my phone when I bought it and signed in. Or I made Google checkout for my phone, now I can rent movies on Youtube. Or buy a book I saw in search results. And my phtos from my phone go right to Picasa. Where I can use the Google checkout to buy photo prints of them.

That your Android account is your gmail account is your youtube account is a selling point of Google services to a normal person.

I heard that Android thing is doing pretty well, and it is the single most heavily account integrated thing Google has ever done. The contagion seems to be working so far as "active user" accounts go.

[eliasmacpherson]

You are mistaken in thinking you have to be logged in to be a user. I'm still using youtube, just not logged in.

I don't have a problem with an integrated login which is what they've had up until now, and which your family have been using successfully. I do have a problem with an automatically integrated login - one of the reasons I avoided google+, and indeed the Android. It's the automatic behaviour that I labelled 'contagious'. All these convenience functions that you bring up sound fantastic if you can opt in and opt out at will, however it's the automatic nature of this 'contagion' that is annoying.

Don't try to speak for a 'normal person', it's a poor choice of words in any case. Privacy conscious people are not abnormal. I know plenty of people for whom having their photos go from their phone to picasa automatically would be an absolute nightmare, and they have very normal privacy concerns.

I'm sure you do not subscribe to "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide".