The only way I can think that the OP makes any sense is if his work has a separate Google Domain. This is where you technically use Gmail, but you have your own domain, so your email address is yourname@yourcompany.com. It’s a feature Google always tries to get me to get, but it costs money, so no way. And since I don’t use it, I don’t know if they’ve recently changed something.
And, frankly, it is annoying. I have to use two different browsers to log into my two different YouTube accounts. Fortunately Firefox is working on a solution to that. I doubt Chrome is, seeing as Google+ only makes sense from a financial perspective if you use one account for everything, and can thus pool all that info Google has on you with your real life friends, who likely share the same interests.
My school’s email still ends with @university.edu. It works the same way with businesses that use gmail (although I don’t know what the OP’s actual email is obviously.) You can read about Gmail’s business serivce here, for example. http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/gmail.html
Basically, you’re just using Gmail for the back end of your email server instead of running your own server or relying on the one from your ISP. You can still route your stuff to an actual email client, if you’d rather not use the web interface. Google has policies about emails with sensitive info to protect trade secrets.
As a an added benefit, Gmail for business and school integrates with other Google apps, like Docs, Spreadsheet and Calendar. It’s a very cost effective way for small businesses and schools to have Office-like tools without needing Office.
How big is your organization? If it’s just you or a few people, get the free Google Apps. It’s free. I use it for multiple (personal) domains for my wife and me. Setup was pretty easy, and it coexists with my domains that are actually hosted at a web host.
Actually they keep recommending it despite the fact that I only use Gmail for personal mail. My organization, if you can call it that, is really just me, fixing computers, and doesn’t really have a web presence.
EDIT: Since you do use the feature I was talking about, do you know if anything has changed recently, like what the OP is talking about?
The OP’s key complaint seems to be that his company contracted with Google to supply their email servers and, because of that, Google will now give the company full access to entire search history in their customer’s accounts.
Actually if you’re a small business - 30 addresses or less, I think - the Gmail application is free. We switched over a couple of years ago and we pay nothing. My address is swallowed@office.com but it runs completely on the Google email platform and can be used as a valid Gmail address for other Google applications like Google Adwords and Analytics
That said, the OP has no idea what he’s talking about. I use multiple gmail accounts at work and at home, logging in and out as needed. I don’t need to do any silly crap like switching between browsers. I just log out of whatever account it is that I want to log out of. It doesn’t keep you logged in unless you want it too.
ETA:
I doubt anything has changed since you last looked at it. The OP is just really misinformed.
Merneith is correct. The service isn’t just gmail either – it includes Calendar, Docs, Sites, Groups, etc. I believe it is also dirt cheap; $25 per person per year.
You have a Google account through work and a personal Google account. When you visit a Google site, it automatically logs you in using one of these accounts.
You just have to make sure not to do personal stuff with the work account. If you’re afraid of making a mistake, you can do what other people have suggested: a) logout, b) use two different browsers, c) use Incognito mode for one of your accounts (so the cookies don’t cross-pollinate.
As others have said, it is unlikely that your work cares about anything you access from home, even if you are logged into your work account. I don’t think they can get the records from Google, but I am not sure.
Regarding YouTube: Did you verify that your work account even has YouTube? My work account does not. If I go to YouTube, it always logs me in using my personal account. There are a lot of Google pages that don’t have a work equivalent. An easy way to check is to go to your email and look at the menu in the top-left corner. It lists all the Google pages for your work account.
I just logged into GMail. At the top right of the screen is your name. Click on it and you get a pop-up window. At the bottom of that, it says “Sign out.” It’s explained here.
I just logged in to my work email and surfed over to YouTube. I was not automatically logged in to YouTube the way I am to Google Docs and Google Analytics. YouTube said I could log in with my work account if I set it up that way. However, in practice, I think it’s a bad idea to set up accounts with YouTube, Twittter, Facebook or any of that with a work account. Too risky. It can look like you’regoofing around during comany time, or if you suddenly find yourself fired and your email account frozen, things could get difficult.
A university I worked for used Gmail this way. It is cheap, but you give up a fair amount of control over your email. I’m a security guy, and I was always shaking my head when we had to go and politely ask Google for some log or other data needed for an incident response, wait around while they decided if they were going to do it, and then wait some more more for them to get around to it. Reacting to spam and phishing campaigns was also an exercise in hoop-jumping. And it was a real pain in the ass to comply with electronic discovery requests. Yes, let me fight with this crappy Postini archiving system’s search feature which fails randomly with nondescriptive error messages, then spend a day dragging several gigs of data across the internet down to my local LAN so I can burn it to DVDs. I still get annoyed just thinking about it.
If you care about information security – and, from what I can tell, most universities don’t – then you kind of want to keep control of your email.
I feel a bit better. Found the logout button for gmail. That helps a lot. I’m not real happy about the work related google account. But, I can live with it by making sure I always log out of Gmail that logs out of the Google account too. Closing a tab is easier, but that doesn’t log out the Google account. So, logging out completely from Gmail is the best approach.
Same with my “organization”: my wife and me. I decided that I like Gmail enough and hated my webhost’s interface so much that switching my email handling to Google Apps was a wise choice. Normally I used IMAP and a proper email client for everything, but having a Gmail interface when on the road is nice.
As for the OP, I guess I’m now confused. If he logs onto his work Gmail account from home, he’s afraid that his personal surfing with other Google services will be monitored. First, I don’t think logging is even available. If it is available, it will always be logged from his home IP address (not work’s). And if he’s really worried, he can just log out from Gmail. And if he’s really paranoid, he can use private browsing if his browser has it.
FWIW, at work I’m allowed to browse the 'Dope, use Youtube, and do anything that’s not abusive, but then I work for a company that expects results and not blind obedience to silly rules. (I’m not at work now. It’s nearly midnight.)
It may stem from a misunderstanding of how Google cookies work. From a recent example in MPSIMS Google bases ad preferences on your surfing habits. It’s what they use to generate some of the ads you see, kind of like teh way Amazon or Netflix recommends “books/movies you might like” in that creepy cyber-stalker kind of way where they examine your download patterns.
I have admin privileges on the Work Gmail platform and as far as I can tell, there is no way to see what any employees have logged on to, unless it’s a major feature of the application (Google Docs shows you, for example, the revision history of a shared document.) I don’t see anything that suggests it’s logging IPs or any sites that you visit and collecting that data for company email administrators to access.
Have you enabled multiple sign-in? I don’t know if it works with all Google services, but it does allow me to keep gmail and calender tabs open simultaneously for different log-ins.
Set up a separate (non)installation (i.e. a directory on your PC, or even on a separate thumb drive) of a portable browser like Firefox Portable. (Chrome also has a portable version, but if you don’t trust Google you might not want to use that one. :p) That creates a browser in a separate sandbox. Never use that one to log into any site you don’t trust, and you’re set.