Multiple Sign In for Google Accounts

If you have a personal Google account, you may notice that you are unable to sign in to both your personal account and your Google Apps account in the same web browser simultaneously. This has some people asking if the accounts are somehow merged or something.

Rest assured, your accounts are still separate. In fact, Google is protecting that separation by keeping you from logging in to both accounts at once. I think they do this so that there is no confusion about which account you are using, so that you don't accidentally share data from one account to the other.

However, you can change your preferences to allow you to be logged in to both accounts simultaneously. This is called Multiple Sign In. Instructions for enabling Multiple Sign In are available at http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=181599

Alternatively, you can sign in to your Google Apps account in one browser (e.g. Firefox) and your personal Google account in another browser (e.g. IE, Chrome).

Hopefully that helps. Sorry for the confusion.