We use both of these features very heavily at Google, so I'm really happy to see them launch externally. The ability to restrict posts to within a company lets you create a corporate social network very easily (think Yammer, Chatter, etc.). One of the main complaints I hear about Google+ is that specific friends aren't on it, but that's much less of an issue if your company uses Google Apps. I spend a lot of time and get a lot of value out of within-our-company Google+ posts.
And since Google has widely distributed offices, I can't tell you how many video meetings I've attended, but it's a lot. Having the ability to join a video conference/hangout from a link in Calendar makes such meetings really easy to set up.
I was first very exited about those possibilities but if I get it right I have to basically give up / merge my personal G+ Account unless I want to have 2 account with the same name on G+.
If I do so the Apps-admin will have full control over my account including reading my private messages, deleting my account... right? Besides trust issues I wonder what would happen if I leave the company? How do you handle this at Google?
You just have two accounts. But you have that anyway if your company using is Google Apps. I think the assumption that people have a work email and a personal email is generally pretty reasonable.
Sounds reasonable indeed. Nevertheless a little confusing since both my profiles would be at least partially public.
What's your experience at Google? Do all off you habe 2 accounts and if so, don't you have problems making sure that your not work related friends etc. don connect with the wrong profile?
Any employee who uses Gmail personally has two accounts, yes (I actually have four - personal, .edu, my pre-Google startup, and Google). No one outside the corp environment can see my corp account. From my corp account, I can't find my personal account by searching. If I go directly to my personal profile page and try to circle my personal account from my corp account, I get an error "due to domain restriction".
So I guess the short version is no, what you are concerned about won't happen.
> So I guess the short version is no, what you are concerned about won't happen.
It won't happen for Googlers, but it will happen for G+ business users, since they (afaik) can't make their profile fully private, and it won't be entirely silo'ed.
I have a corp account and a personal account. What I do is make two different pictures for my avatar: I use one avatar of me for my Google-internal account, and a different avatar for external use. Then I can just look up and see which picture of me it is, and I instantly know whether I'm on corp vs. personal.
For the most part, we use video hangouts for smaller meetings, but that's an interesting suggestion: I could see private Hangouts on Air being useful for company-wide meetings. I don't know exactly what the team has planned though.
Hey Matt - I'm the founder/organizer of the NY Enterprise Technology Meetup, the first monthly tech forum in NYC exclusively focused on enterprise tech company demos. Are you able to connect me with someone from the team so that I can inquire about them demoing at a future event?
We launched in January of this year, have almost 1,000 members, and get about 125 attendees to each events (mix of technologists, entrepreneurs, investors, and students). Check us out at www.meetup.com/ny-enterprise-tech and www.nyetm.com.
> I don't know why, but psychologically I would feel like this is somehow less private than, say, a mailing list. I'm probably becoming old :)
I think that's a really interesting comment! Perhaps it's because the UX is more social network-y (FB/Twitter), which are historically public, and less email-y+historically private?
And since Google has widely distributed offices, I can't tell you how many video meetings I've attended, but it's a lot. Having the ability to join a video conference/hangout from a link in Calendar makes such meetings really easy to set up.