Can I create a Google account programmatically?

Question

Does anybody know if via the google api in java I can create google accounts programmatically.

Answer 1

As others have pointed out, you cannot create Google consumer accounts (ie, @gmail accounts) via any sort of API. It would create a field day for Spammers. To make it difficult for Spammers, Google uses tactics such as CAPTCHAs to prevent abuse.

But, you can create Google Apps accounts via their Provisioning APIs. A Google Apps account is basically a white labeled version of Google Apps (Gmail, Calendar, Docs, etc) that is under your own domain name.

For the same Spam concerns, your Google Apps account would have to be either a Premier domain (where you pay for every account you provision) or an Educational institution (I assume some sort of verification process for that). So, since you have to pay for each account, it's not a huge risk for spammers (unless they want to pay big $$$ for each account.. very unlikely).