New Google Accounts Require Gmail and Google+
If you try to create a Google account from Google's homepage, you'll notice that Google redesigned the page, but that's not all. You'll now have to create a Gmail account, a Google Profile and you'll automatically join Google+.
Context & Ripple Effects
The profile layer this move leans on has been building for years: Google launched Google Profiles back in December 2007 and refreshed it with a new interface in March 2011. What changes on January 20, 2012 is that the profile stops being optional scaffolding and becomes a gate — no new Google account without a Gmail address, a Profile, and automatic Google+ enrollment.
The timing matters because Google is simultaneously pruning: the same stretch brings confirmed closures of Picnik, the Social Graph API, and Urchin under its spring-cleaning campaign, while Google+ keeps adding features like webcam 'Record video' updates that observers read as encroaching on YouTube's territory. Mandatory enrollment is how Google converts its largest asset — account creation volume — into Google+ membership.
First-order effects
- Every person signing up for a Google account from the homepage is now enrolled in Google+ whether they want the social network or not, inflating Google+'s registered-user base with users who came for email alone.
- Users who only want an email address must accept a Google Profile as part of the deal, collapsing the old distinction between a bare account and a public identity.
Second-order effects
- Facebook faces a rival whose growth is no longer earned visit-by-visit but bundled into the default signup flow of the web's dominant email service, changing the competitive math for social-network user acquisition.
- Developers and sites that rely on Google accounts for sign-in inherit a population where every user carries a Profile and Google+ presence, making Google's identity graph the de facto identity layer for third-party logins.
Third-order effects
- If the bundling pattern holds, product adoption at Google shifts from organic pull to mandatory enrollment through shared infrastructure — a structure regulators and rivals alike treat as leveraging dominance in one market (email) to seed another (social).
- Account creation itself becomes the strategic chokepoint: whoever controls the default signup flow controls distribution for every adjacent service, pushing competitors to defend their own identity systems rather than just their apps.
The trend: Identity and account creation are becoming the primary distribution channel for social networks, with Google converting mandatory Gmail signups into Google+ membership.