Google planning update that will allow users to change their embarrassing old email addresses – News

Google LLC is giving Indian users the opportunity to change the @gmail.com address associated with their existing Google accounts in a dramatic shift away from its long-held policy on usernames.

For more than 20 years, anyone who has created a Gmail account has been stuck with the username they first chose, meaning that their Google identities were permanently tied to whatever spur-of-the-moment name they came up with at the time. It has become quite frustrating for a lot of people who chose somewhat embarrassing addresses, only to realize they should have created something more professional, or creative, perhaps.

Because of Google’s refusal to allow @gmail.com address changes, any who wanted to change their email identity had to create a new account. But the problem is that many people have so many apps and services tied to their accounts, and so much important data associated with it, that they can’t just give it up. Google eventually came up with a complicated and fraught process to transfer data between accounts manually, but that process would usually disrupt any integrations with third-party applications.

That’s why Google’s decision to finally let users change their @gmail.com addresses is likely to be one that’s welcomed by many people. The ability to do so is currently limited to Indian users, but an updated Hindi language support page reveals that it will ultimately be made available globally. For now though, it seems Google is just testing the feature before making it more broadly available.

Hindi-speaking users who change their Gmail address will automatically retain their original address as an “alias,” Google said in the update. Emails sent to the old address will land in the inbox associated with the new one, and the original account will also still work when signing into services such as Google Drive, Maps and YouTube. In addition, all of the existing data, including photos, messages and emails, will remain unchanged following an address update.

However, it’s not clear if users who change their Gmail address will be able to sign in with non-Google services using their reinvented accounts. Websites and apps such as Spotify, Airbnb and others that allow users to “sign in with Google” may not recognize the new address when someone tries to do so, and Google recommends that users manually change their contact email for third-party services.

There are some limitations, though. Google said anyone who changes their Gmail address will have to wait 12 months before they can do it again. Moreover, they’ll only be able to do it three times in total, before losing the ability to do so permanently. So that means users are limited to a total of four Gmail addresses over the lifetime of their Google accounts.

Google has not yet published any announcement about the change, which was first spotted by Fast Company, and so it hasn’t provided a timeline on when it might make the feature available in other markets.

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