Google "Brand Account" can not access associated "Google Drive" - drive

I recently set up a Brand Account on Google for a non-profit organization I am affiliated with. I have been unable to get to the account's Drive, even though under My Account (for the Brand Account) it tells me I have 0 bytes used. Every attempt to get the the drive kicks me over to my personal account.
I heard from one fellow on the Google My Business forum. He suspects that the Drive functionality for Brand Accounts may be intentionally deprecated.
It seems perhaps they are steering the branded accounts more to just social stuff (Youtube, Pictures, Google+ seem fully functional).
Can anyone here verify or disprove this theory?

It seems that google Brand Accounts do not support Drive. Too bad, it would have been a great solution to our needs.

Related

Google Play Policy of Intellectual property; why they actually accept Copyright infringement first?

Google said Intellectual Property is very important. But for example, if I search "Among Us" there are like Among Us wallpaper, Among Us chatting (1m downloads), Among Us Tic Tac Toe and so on. I don't think none of them get the permission from Among Us company. How come Google play approved those apps?
I read many developers got experience of being closed their accounts for different reasons including against IP. So first they approved easily, and then randomly they close people's accounts that were against IP? or Google Play will stop these apps when Among Us claims?
when it comes to intellectual property google doesn't take any action regarding your apps , unless the rightful owner files a copyright claim. that's why the app gets accepted and after a while it might get suspended if the owner files a copyright claim against your app and the right resources to prove his case, you might be contacted by playstore with an email of app removal and the cause of it. so if a i create an app called "Facebook profile pictures" i can easily upload it and it stays live on the store in case Facebook didn't take actions against my app

Cannot Access Google Colab when logged in with Google Workplace Account

We are having an issue that is causing a lot of tickets to roll in for us. We have professors that have been using Google Colaboratory with their students and we are getting reports that students are not able to access Colaboratory via their University Google Accounts for at least the last week, if not longer. They are receiving error messages that state "you don't have access to this service" and asks them to contact their Google Account Administrator for access. If they log out and log in with a personal gmail account they are able to access it. I have had multiple calls in with Google Support now and they are telling me that because Google Colaboratory is not a Workplace application, they are very limited as to what they can do and they have yet to find a solution to the problem.
The only information that I’ve been able to find online is the Colaboratory Team asking users to toggle a setting in Google Workplace (https://github.com/googlecolab/colabtools/issues/1065#issuecomment-605486998) however that setting is already toggled on for our account so it is of no help.
Also, I will note that the issue only seems to be happening for our students who are a part of our root organizational unit while Faculty and Staff appear to have access to Colab and they are in a sub group of the OU.
Could someone help?

I need to group Google Apps users by their Organization

Here's what I'm trying to do:
When people log into our app, using Google Apps OAuth, they are automatically grouped within the app, by their organization.
We're already doing this with Slack, where a user logs in, says which team they want to log in from, and they are automatically grouped with other people from their Slack team.
With Google, it seems a bit more complicated. I do not need access to anything within the organization: no user list, no other e-mails, no files. All I need is the name of the organization, and some sort of unique identifier.
Is this even possible? I've been digging through this without much success: it seems like an admin from the apps account has to install or approve the app?
I'm getting the sinking feeling that this will have to be something setup via the Marketplace, but that's far from ideal from our perspective.
Can it be done?
What you want is the hd claim of the ID Token. This represents the "hosted domain" of the Google for Work user, i.e. their organization.
If you use the Google Sign-in library, you will be able to get the ID Token of the user, once you have that you can extract the hd claim. Try these docs: web, ios, android.

Migrate Google Merchant account to different country

Slovakia has been added recently to list of supported Merchant countries for Google Play.
I have an account in Czech Republic (CZK) paired with Merchant Account with active paid and free apps and want to change the country to Slovakia (EUR) - mostly because i of the fees related to money transfers from a different currency (CZK to EUR) on my business account.
I have been searching on Google but found nothing except for transferring all my apps to new developer account. I'm afraid that this will hurt my play store search positions and i won't be able to transfer the Google Play Services data (LeaderBoards, Achievements)
Also i want to keep the package names.
Had someone done this? How should i proceed?
June 2017 update:
Apps with subscriptions can now be transferred!!!
The original answer:
This is a complete answer I got from Google:
Hi,
Thanks for contacting Google Play Developer Support.
I understand you'd like to change the country associated with your Google Payments Merchant account. Once your Google Payments Merchant account has been created, it's not possible to change the country associated with that account. Instead, I can cancel and refund your existing developer account and transfer your apps to a new developer account that has the appropriate merchant country details.
To get started with this process:
Edit your current developer account name. If you'd like to continue to use your developer name with the new account, you’ll need to change your current name in order to free it up for the new account. For example, name the old account “xxx-OLD,” so you can use "xxx" in your new account. Make sure you save your settings.
Create a second Google Account (with a new, different email address). After you've created the new account, you will need to configure Google Payments with a billing address corresponding to your preferred merchant country.
After you've registered the newly created Google Play Developer Console account, create a new Google Payments Merchant account from the Developer Console. Pay special attention to the country listed for your legal business address. You may need to adjust your Google Payments settings if you haven't configured your billing address properly.
Use this online checklist to submit your app transfer request.
Please note however at this time, an app transfer can't be completed with in-app subscriptions currently or previously configured for your app; this includes subscriptions that do not have subscribers, or those apps which have had all subscriptions canceled.
I understand this limitation can be frustrating, and I apologize that we don't currently have a more seamless way to transfer these applications across accounts. We're actively working with our teams to design a better experience for developers with apps using in-app subscriptions, though we do not currently have an ETA.
I appreciate your understanding, and your dedicated support of Google Play.
Regards,
xxxxx
Google Play Developer Support
The country associated with your Google Play Developer account can't be changed. However, you can create a new account that uses a different country and transfer your apps to your new account.
To transfer apps to a new account, you'll need to prepare some account information. To learn what information you need and to send your request, go to the Google's app transfer checklist.
Reference: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/139626

Account Strategies on New Social Enabled Sites

So I'm in the midst of creating a Facebook Connect enabled site. The site in question will leverage your social graph - as defined by your facebook account - to do social things (what is really not important here). Here's the big question I have:
Are people still rolling their own authentication heuristic when using something like Facebook Connect? That is, are newer (FBConnect) sites today providing only FBConnect as an authentication strategy, or are they pairing it with other auth strategies (such as Google Auth, Open ID, etc)? What do you think is the best way to go? With Facebook having over 300,000,000 users now, is having 1 authentication strategy (FBConnect) enough? Or is it proper netiquette to provide users other means?
Some of the references I have been looking at today:
http://www.kenburbary.com/2009/08/five-reasons-companies-should-be-integrating-social-media-with-facebook-connect/
Increased Registration - Data from Facebook states that sites that use Facebook Conect as an alternate to account registration have seen a 30-300% increase in registration on their sites.
• Citysearch.com – Daily site registrations have tripled in the 4 months since Facebook Connect testing began
• Huffingtonpost.com – Since integrating with Facebook Connect, more than 33% of their new commentor registrations come through Facebook
• Cbsinsider.com – Over 85% of all new user registrations are coming from Facebook Connect
http://www.simtechnologies.net/facebook-connect-integration.php
"according to the current statistics using facebook connect increases 30-40% user traffic as compared to non-facebook connect websites."
http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Connect/Authentication_and_Authorization
Our research has shown that sites that implement Facebook Connect see user registration rates increase by 30 - 200%.
No Need to Create Separate Accounts
In general, it's not a good practice to force a new user to create a separate account when registering on your site with Facebook Connect. You'll have the user's Facebook account information, and can create a unique identifier on your system for that user.
Just make sure you understand what Facebook user data you can store, or simply cache for 24 hours. See Storable Information for details.
If the user ever deactivates his or her Facebook account, you have a chance to contact the user to request the user create a new account on your site. When a user deactivates his or her account, we ping your account reclamation URL to notify you of the deactivation. Then Facebook sends the user an email regarding the deactivation. If the user has connected accounts with any Facebook Connect sites, and if your site has specified an account reclamation URL, the email will contain a section with your application logo, name, and reclamation link, in addition to an explanation about the link's purpose. For more information, see Reclaiming Accounts.
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/how-facebook-connect-points-the-way-towards-velvet-rope-networks/
The Drawbacks
Though there are advantages to using Facebook Connect for integration, there are some drawbacks, mostly from the marketer’s point of view. If you build out a social network project using Facebook Connect, Facebook gets all the information and you get none. You don’t get a database of users. You don’t get a way to message people participating in your event, except for “in stream,” the way everyone else is using the app. You don’t have any sense of demographics, nor any control abilities to block trolls or other unwanted types.
Crystal Beasley "All of the FB Connect sites we have built so far have incorporated "standard" accounts as well, even with the added complexity of supporting dual login methods."
There are still people who use mySpace (myself not included), and I know a several people coming out of college that have completely deleted their FB accounts to get rid of information of them they don't want potential employers to find (I know, there are a lot easier ways of doing this). If there are people who for whatever reason do not want to have a FB account, at least give them the option of creating a private google account.
Using ONLY Facebook as the register/login-method seems pretty dangerous to me. If you had a regular user management system, with Facebook Connect to speed up the process from a user-perspective is a good idea.
The Problem is somewhere else
if you really want to leverage the social graph only facebook brings "pure" data
the graphs people build at e.g. myspace arent telling much about that person and its social env. - at google neither
if you are just heading for viral spreading prefer the plattforms that share the best (just facebook again)