Please be aware.  Google Apps (our mail, calendar and docs provider) is performing a significant shift with their back-end infrastructure.  There is a tremendous amount of marketing-speak and gee-whiz inside the message below and on google's site if you look for what all this transition means; however, I will lay out the ONE single important change that is happening:

* if you have multiple google accounts, you will not be able to be logged into multiple accounts at once inside the same browser (one login-per-tab, for example)

This is the only thing that you need to be aware of.  The technical specifics behind the change are this:  currently google uses multiple browser cookies for each of your google apps accounts, so your browser is able to "be logged into" each of the different accounts at the same time.  However, in their quest to squeeze better metrics from their massive system and make more money from more precisely targeted ads (and continue to offer the Google Apps suite of services to most of us small organizations for free) they are merging all their login cookies into the one existing google.com megacookie.

Here is the precise article that describes the "sign-on" change that I am referring to:

Here is the in-depth article that describes the "how to use multiple google accounts simultaneously" for those of us who have (for example) a "standard" @google.com account as well as a "white-labeled, Google Apps" account for their own personal/professional domain:

Make no mistake: the primary benefactor of this transition is google itself.  The secondary benefactor is your organization.  The direct benefits your organization's users will experience are access to more google services via your organization's Google Apps account (Google Voice immediately jumps to mind).

This migration will happen no later than the week of June 6th.  There are numerous tools and resources available for Google Apps organizations to transition users on their own, prior to the cutoff; however, if the organizations take no action then google will transition you during the second week of June.

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From:  <apps-noreply@google.com>

Date: Wed, May 25, 2011 at 2:31 AM

Subject: Two week notice: Google Apps accounts will be automatically

transitioned

To: Organization Apps Administrator <yyyy@zzzz>

Dear Google Apps administrator,

Google Apps accounts are undergoing an improvement, allowing you to

give users access to over 60 additional applications from Google. We

encourage you to transition your organization’s accounts on your own

schedule now.

There are several advantages to transitioning on your own schedule:

Make the change on your own timeline

Have time to try the new infrastructure with a subset of your accounts first

Use automated mailing lists and email templates to pre-notify your users

Get access to over 60 additional applications from Google right away

We plan to fully transition your organization soon -- including all

users that you have not yet transitioned yourself. If you have not

transitioned by the week of June 8, 2011, we’ll complete the

transition for you.

If you have questions about this transition, we encourage you to

explore our Help Center documentation for administrators and for

end-users.

Sincerely,

The Google Apps Team

-------------

You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update

you about important changes to your Google Apps account.

Please don't reply to this email, as we won't be able to review your

response. You may file a case in your control panel if you need

additional help.

Google Inc.

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