The grand unbundling of Google’s G+ social network continues, with Gmail becoming the latest Google service to gain its independence from Google’s campaign of forced integration. As noted in a post on the WordStream Blog, Google has axed the requirement that new Gmail accounts be tied to a G+ social networking account as of "early September."

For some users, mandatory G+ integration has been an unwanted burden placed on Google’s popular services since 2012, when Google began to link G+ account creation to the sign-up process for most of its services (journalists even had to create G+ profiles in order for their names and pictures to appear next to their own stories in Google News search results). The forced integration became so prevalent—and so onerous—that when Google acquired smart thermostat manufacturer Nest, the running joke was that soon a G+ account would be required to change the temperature in your home.

It's not clear whether the move brought benefits to anyone but Google. Bolting G+ onto YouTube, for example, proved to be a colossal mess yet resulted in no measurable improvement to the cesspool of comments beneath most videos.

Things started to change when G+ founder Vic Gundotra left Google in April 2014. In the wake of Gundotra’s departure, the de-emphasizing of G+ began; YouTube no longer requires you to log in with a G+ account, and in August Google separated its Google+ Photos service from G+.

Gmail now has regained its independence from the in-house social network. Attempting to sign up for a new Gmail account prompts you to create a multi-service Google account, then gives you the option to either create a public G+ profile or skip the step altogether. If you opt to skip, you’re taken directly to your new Gmail inbox. We were able to quickly set up a new Gmail account (masquerading as Ars Senior IT reporter Jon Brodkin) and snag screenshots to confirm that G+ is now optional.







If you’ve opted to skip, clicking your profile name in your Gmail inbox gives you the option to "Join Google+" if you so desire, but you’re not forced into tricks like closing the browser window or using deprecated sign-up URLs to avoid a mandatory G+ profile page.

Even though forced G+ integration continues to disappear, Google’s push towards global identity management across its services isn’t going away—you can still use a single Google account for YouTube, Gmail, the Google Play store, and so on. However, making G+ optional makes it much easier to carve out and manage multiple identities across services; it’s getting easier to maintain a YouTube account that has nothing to do with your Gmail account or your Google Play account, for example. For people who prefer to keep different components of their online identity firmly segregated—as I do—this is a very, very good thing.