Gmail’s full-stop freakout

When a semi-clever feature causes fear.

At some point down the line, most likely when Gmail was launched, they implemented quite a unique feature. Quite unique, but also a cause for chaos.

As Ryan Coleman has discovered, when you email a gmail account, the full-stops in the local prefix of the address (”fintan.darrgh” in my case) don’t really matter.

You can have as many or as few as you want in there. I’ve done a quick test, and yes, fintandarragh@gmail.com and fin.ta.n.darragh@gmail.com both work, even though my ‘proper’ address is fintan.darragh@gmail.com, which is also my user name.

It’s a bit of a funny feature, and you can see it might be helpful in catching the emails of those who send to fintandarragh@gmail.com by mistake, but it is quite convention breaking and rather confusing at first.

Problems

Well, Ryan was complaining that he was receiving email meant for ryancoleman@gmail.com, at his address ryan.coleman@gmail.com.

Thinking about it, there are only two real reasons why this can happen, if Google’s feature stands true:

1. Someone’s emailing @gmail.com instead of @hotmail.com (or whatever) by mistake. Quite likely… Ryan Coleman’s a bit of a popular name, and it’s easy enough to get mixed up with the addresses.
2. Google messed up quite a bit by allowing both ryan.coleman and ryancoleman to register as unique usernames.

Now since there is no evidence to support 2., it must be that someone’s emailing ryancoleman@gmail.com as opposed to some other domain by mistake. It just would have seem strange to get that email, so sparking a bit of a worry.

Conclusion

Well, we know a new feature of Gmail.

Comments to f.i.n.t.a.n.d.a.r.r.a.g.h@gmail.com.