Sorry for the Spam: The Google+ for Google Apps Rollout

I use Google Apps for my E-mail here on johnbeales.com. Earlier today I was updating some unimportant thing in the admin and noticed that I could turn on Google+ for johnbeales.com, something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while, woohoo! With Google+ up & running it was time to set up my circles.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Google+ it’s Google’s answer to Facebook, and you can add your friends to groups, called “Circles.” There’s animation & stuff and it’s kind of fun.

After turning on Google+ for johnbeales.com I went ahead and added pretty much my whole address book, (Since Google already controls my E-mail it can show me anyone that E-mailed, pretty much ever), thinking that I was putting the people I know into groups that would make them easier to find and when if I needed to contact them again. What I hadn’t realized was that Google was E-mailing every single person I put into a group. So if I did business at some point with you years ago I might have put you into my “acquaintances” group, or perhaps into my “Vendors” or “Customers” group, and you would have received an E-mail because of this. If I’ve dealt with you at multiple E-mail addresses you may have receives an E-mail at each address. I did not mean for this to happen. Inboxes are polluted enough, and I’m sorry for polluting your inbox even more.

So of course I went and turned off the E-mail notifications, right? Wrong. I can’t figure out how. Once you’re already signed up with Google+ you can say that you don’t want notifications when other people add you to their circles, but it seems that if you’re not already a member you’re doomed to just keep getting this spam from Google. If Google is smart, and they often are, this will change. I’ll keep looking for a solution. In the meantime, I’ll be more selective about who I add to circles.