Takeout, the company’s easy to use latest tool, unveiled over the weekend, will be especially useful to anyone who signed up to Google+ in its early stages with their Gmail account and now want to migrate it to a Google Apps managed account or a different Google+ profile. Google+ users can now seamlessly link their existing circles, connections and preferences to a new Gmail account using Google’s Takeout service.
Here is what Google+ product manager Ronald Ho mentioned in a blog post:
“A while back we disclosed plans for a tool that would help you transfer your circles from one Google+ account to another and ensure that your followers are automatically directed to your new, preferred profile,” Ho, wrote in a post on the social network. “Today, anyone can visit Google Takeout and click ‘Transfer your Google+ connections to another account’.”
Google Takeout, beyond its many uncomplicated features, for instance, permits you to transfer your Circles of “friends” from one Google+ account to another. That means Google+ followers of your old account will be seamlessly redirected to your new account. Many users were asking for this feature since Goolge+ went out of beta and started allowing Google Apps managed accounts besides Gmail-only addresses, as it was the case in its initial stages.
The tool functions by transferring users’ Google+ circles and connections from what it calls a “source” account to a “destination” account. By clicking “Transfer your Google+ connections to another account” on the Takeout site, you can ensure even your most obscure follower will make the leap to your new profile. Once users’ accounts are merged with this tool, people in their circles will only see the “destination” profiles.
Once the merging process is accomplished, then from this stage onwards all followers will automatically be dropped directly into your new, preferred profile, according to Ho, who posted a notice about the update on his Google+ page.
The transition with Google Takeout would not be quick though. The process has some restrictions to get the transfer started, including a seven-day waiting period before the transfer actually commences and the ability to use the tool only once every six months. Also, there is a caveat: Once the transfer begins, it cannot be canceled or undone. Transfers take around 48 hours, during which users would not be able to share content or add, remove, block, or ignore people.
Moreover, Google is only offering the service for Google+ Circles, and unfortunately any other content, photos, comments, and profile information is not transferred to the destination account, much to some users’ dismay.
However, Google lets you download your +1s, contacts, profile and stream through Takeout — which is much more than rival social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, do. The search engine giant also mentions that people who no longer want to use their old (or existing) Google+ account can delete their profile by visiting http://plus.google.com/downgrade and selecting “Delete your entire Google+ profile.”
For further information about the Google+ transfer process or deleting your account visit http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&topic=2400106&answer=1716102.
Nevertheless, this is most likely appears to be a welcome news for those users that have more than one account associated with different email addresses or Google Apps accounts. The tool combines all circle names, members, and settings, along with the people and pages users have blocked or ignored.