Google is 'gradually rolling out' option to change your gmail.com address

Perceived benefits of changing Gmail addresses

• Many welcome the feature because early, “cringe” or juvenile addresses became central to their identity (Google Voice, purchases, long histories) and were hard to abandon.
• Users with life changes (e.g., name changes after marriage) felt stuck with deadnames on critical accounts and see this as long-overdue “basic competency.”
• Some hope it will also enable account merging or moving data between accounts, which historically has been painful and incomplete.

Aliases, unique emails, and tracking data leaks

• Several describe using per-site aliases (via +tag, custom domains, or services like Firefox Relay, iCloud “Hide My Email,” mailbox.org, Fastmail) to:
  • Trace which companies leak or share emails.
  • Shut off compromised addresses without discarding the main account.
• Discussion notes weaknesses of Gmail’s + addressing because bad actors can strip the + part and spam the base address.
• Custom-domain catchalls with random strings are favored for stronger per-site separation and leak attribution.

Spam filtering and email provider comparisons

• Mixed experiences with Gmail spam filtering: some see almost no spam, others report obvious spam in inbox and important messages in spam.
• Similar complaints are made about iCloud Mail’s overly aggressive silent spam filtering breaking account recovery.
• These issues drive some to alternative providers (Fastmail, ProtonMail) or client-side filtering.

Account recovery, 2FA, and lock-in risks

• Multiple stories of losing long-held accounts (Gmail, Hotmail, Dropbox, GitHub) despite having passwords and backup codes; codes sometimes simply failed.
• Recovery email addresses often cannot actually recover accounts and function more as notification endpoints.
• Phone-based recovery and SIM loss/SIM-swapping are highlighted as major failure modes; some recount near-misses or large crypto thefts in similar scenarios.
• Many emphasize backing up TOTP seeds/QR codes (paper, encrypted exports, multiple WebAuthn keys) and not relying on a single device.

Custom domains, portability, and residual risks

• Using a personal domain with Gmail (or other providers) is seen as a key way to avoid being locked into one provider and to enable unlimited aliases.
• Tradeoffs raised:
  • Domain registrar becomes the new single point of failure.
  • Long-term obligation to keep the domain renewed.
  • Privacy concerns from linking all aliases under one registrant, even with WHOIS privacy.

Misaddressed mail and Gmail’s dot behavior

• Many report receiving sensitive emails for name-twins, often due to confusion between first.last and firstlast.
• Clarified that Gmail ignores dots and +suffix, so misdeliveries are usually others misremembering their own addresses, not separate accounts.

Social and policy angles

• Some hiring teams reportedly use “age of email” as a fraud signal, which could conflict with newly created job-search aliases.
• Debate over surname changes at marriage touches on tradition, sexism, and cultural variation.
• A few worry the feature could create chaos or be leveraged in legal/transition issues (e.g., G Suite free legacy accounts), but details remain unclear.