What is your gmail ID ?

Mine is mandar.deodhar@gmail.com .. not just this but mandardeodhar@gmail.com, m.a.n.d.a.r.d.e.o.d.h.a.r@gmail.com and many more. Total 4096 addresses like this.

Got the trick ?

The dot in you username is redundant. You can place it anywhere (except starting and ending) or just remove it. All mails addresses are valid.

Checkout this screenshot: (open in new tab to see it zoomed)

 
Just see the red marked stuff. I have sent a test mail to different addresses and all mails are delivered to my Inbox. Also, google is ready to help you out with this Help.

Hence if you are having 'n' letters in your email addresses, the nyou actually own 2^(n-1) distinct email addresses on google. Isn't that interesting ? I just accidentaly discovered it. Digged it a bit and realized its a nice feature. Helpful if you have a website where you are subscribing using trial for few days and login requires a fresh valid mail address. Great.Prince.Of.Czechoslovakia@gmail.com can have 6,71,08,864 addresses. (Dont try to register it now .. its already gone .. yours truly has taken it just now ;-) )

Now the interesting question is why google is doing this ?
My answer is, google's motto is to organize the world's information. For google - mail, blogger, orkut, reader, docs is not just a service. Your user name is a 'profile' which has behavior which can be learn by machine learning algorithm to display targeted advertisements. Removing non characters is a simplest method to do string matching. Hence it gives google a chance to unify your different profiles as one. Any more suggestions are welcome.

Few off topic stuff now .. if you look closely, you can see there is no chat box or send invites box on left side of gmail. They are redundant hence I removed them using some simple hacks. Similarly, the right side advertisements are also totally useless. There is no way I am going to click on them .. Still let them be there .. thats google's bread and butter which allows them to provide great 'g' apps for free.

2 comments:

SameerDS said...

"the right side advertisements are also totally useless. There is no way I am going to click on them .."

I wouldn't bet on that! Google know their business very well. They show ads in gmail because people do click on them. You havn't clicked on one "yet". Neither have I.

Some Little Greens said...

Hi Sameer, I was expecting comment on that part from someone like you :-)

Personally, I don't believe in Google's business model. Although Google says "Don't be Evil", I feel Google is getting more clicks because of user's lack of knowledge than genuine clicks. I always found non sponsored links more relevant than sponsored links in Google search results. After all free results are generated by the great machine learning algorithms and sponsored links are driven by money spending. Most of the time user doesn't know the difference and just click on the link.

In my 9 years of internet history I don't think I have ever clicked on any sponsored link. I know exactly where to focus for relevant content. My click to impression ratio would be something like 818238123192:6 :-)