Oops, how I broke my fake BIMI logo (and then fixed it)

TIL that you can accidentally cancel out your Gmail account avatar (which I lovingly refer to as a "fake BIMI") if you're not careful with your Google Workspace email routing configuration.

Here's what happened.

1. Long ago, I created a standalone Google (not Gmail) account for newsletter@spamresource.com. That's not an actual user in my Google Workspace, so my "catchall" forwarding rule was sending me any emails to it -- including the initial Google account verification.
2. I set a profile picture for this Google account, and then whenever I send authenticated email as that address (newsletter@spamresource.com) -- from any external source -- my little "Spam Resource" stop sign logo shows up in Gmail inboxes.
3. Later, I nuked the "catchall" setting in my Google Workspace config because it was shoveling me tons of spam. Now that means that mail to newsletter@spamresource.com was bouncing. Oops.
4. To make inbound email to that address work again, so people could respond to the weekly newsletter, I set newsletter@ as an email alias for my "real" user account.
5. Whoops! The profile picture / sender avatar for email sends from newsletter@spamresource.com is now the profile picture for my "real" Al Iverson account. It's no longer showing the "Spam Resource" logo associated with the newsletter@ account.
6. When I log in to the newsletter@ Google account, Google warns me that the address has been reclaimed by someone else, and nudges me to provide a different email address.

The fix?

1. First, I removed the email alias in Google Workspace. The address newsletter@ is no longer an alternate email address for the Al Iverson user.
2. I configured a mail routing rule in the Gmail admin interface, instead. Match address: newsletter@spamresource.com, redirect the inbound mail to Al Iverson.
3. I went back into the standalone Google account for newsletter@ to tell it once again that the account's email address is newsletter@spamresource.com, by navigating thusly: Google Account -> Personal info -> Contact info -> Email. In my case, the address was temporarily changed to something like "newsletter%wombatmail.com@gtempaccount.com", this is what I'm changing back to newsletter@spamresource.com.
4. Google wanted to send a new verification email to newsletter@spamresource.com. No problem. They sent it, I clicked it, we're now confirmed.
5. Immediately after reloading Gmail, the sender logo next to Spam Resource logos disappeared. After about a half an hour, the sender logo I was expecting, the "Spam Resource" one, was now displaying.

Email sent to newsletter@spamresource.com routes back to me, thanks to the email routing setting in Google Workspace. (But please don't send me spam.)

Final Thoughts

I perhaps could have solved this issue with Google's Conflicting Accounts Management functionality in Google Workspace, but I also didn't want to make newsletter@spamresource.com into a full user account as we pay by the user here and I'd prefer to save that few bucks. Besides, I don't like having a login for a fake account that I don't really need to log in to. One less password to remember or store, and one less access point into my email domain. I think that matters under the principle of least privilege.

And I'm keeping in mind that this is hack on top of hack on top of hack. This is not a BIMI logo. This is not the same as a BIMI logo. I call this a BIMI logo in the same way oat "milk" fans refer to their desired coffee creamer. It's not a BIMI anything. It's the profile picture for a Google account, and I'm uploading a logo into it, instead of a person's headshot photo. It allows me to display a logo when sending to Gmail users (at consumer Gmail as well as for Google Workspace recipients), but not anywhere else.

While this works today, Google probably won't allow this logo workaround forever. But before they take it away, I hope they and/or Apple will offer up an alternative sender logo option for those of us who are too small and too poor to register a trademark and buy a $1000+ yearly Verified Mark Certificate. I want that logo to show!