Starting on April 10th Google plans on pushing out an update to the sign-in page for Google accounts. This change is meant to further unify the sign-in process across your various devices.

Although the news was posted to the G Suite Developers blog, we do fully expect this change to affect all Google accounts on all browsers, mobile browsers, and iOS apps (Android apps should not be affected). Google's SSO will also see additional changes beyond the purely cosmetic, as a new permissions grant redirect will be added to the login process, and permissions requested by a site or service will be more explicitly stated.

image01668

The privacy-conscious will be excited to hear that Google is making such an effort to ensure a greater awareness on the part of users when it comes to privacy and consent in the use of third party services. Unfortunately, the permission request pane will no longer list what Google considers to be "standard" permission requests, presumably including basic account information. At least Google is making some effort to increase privacy awareness during login, even going so far as to increase the burden of responsibility for that privacy on developers by requiring contact information to be listed at a link on the permissions page.

These aren't the only changes to login Google will be making. The use of Webview for OAuth will also be given the axe after April 20th, so if you are a developer relying on a webview redirect for OAuth to grant permissions you should consider changing to the official methods very soon before it breaks. Even some large companies like Airbnb and Pocket still haven't updated to the new methods, so it's worth taking a look.

The rollout for the new sign-in is expected to be quite extended, potentially requiring more than two weeks for full visibility, so don't be surprised if you don't notice any changes to your sign-in process for a while. Most people probably won't notice much of a change beyond the cosmetic, anyway (although, our readers certainly aren't most people).

UPDATE: 2017/04/12 12:31am PDT BY

Google has shared a nice GIF to show how this new sign-in process and page will look. Here it is:

[gfycat data_id="BlushingDisastrousBurro"]

Source: Google Support, G Suite Updates, G Suite Developers Blog, Medium