Gmail is finally looking to get rid of one of its more embarrassing restrictions, and let people choose new email addresses.
Ever since it was first introduced, more than 20 years ago, Google has required that people keep the email address that they first signed up with on their Gmail account. The only way to get a new email address is to set up a whole new account – but that can come with a whole host of other problems, such as losing access not only to email data but associated services that use that account to login, such as YouTube.
That means that people can stay attached to email addresses long after they might have outlived their usefulness. People who signed up when young might find themselves embarrassed by their address, for instance, or people who change their names might be forced to keep referring to themselves using the old one.
Now, at last, Google appears to be testing a new feature that would let people change the address of their Gmail account while still keeping the account itself. All of their emails and other data will stay intact.
The feature appears to be rolling out quietly for now. It was initially announced on a Telegram group and currently seems available only to people using their accounts in the Hindi language.
But a support page on the update – on the Hindi-language part of Google’s site – suggests that it will start rolling out more broadly. For the moment, however, the English-language pages say that it is not possible to change an account’s address.
When users change their email address using the tool, their old one will stay active as an alias. That means that emails sent to it will still find their way to the old account.
It does come with some limitations. Changes can only happen once a year, the support page indicates, and in total people can only do it three times.
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