Coming in the future: Change your Gmail address?

If Ben Schoon, writing for 9to5Google, is to be believed, it sounds like an option could be coming in the future that allows Gmail users to change their email address. I’m really thinking of it almost as an alias address creator or manager, based on the initial description of how this could supposedly work.

Address change, or alias?

The TL:DR of it? You’d be allowed to change your email address three times for a total of four addresses; and those old addresses would continue to work as email aliases (would there be a way to delete or disable those?), meaning your email subscriptions would not have to be updated.

Back in the Day

Old school email nerds like you and me, we already knew that we could create another Gmail address if/when needed. Then it was a (mostly) simple process to configure the old Gmail account to forward any mail received to the new one. Or vice versa. I've done this a bunch of times myself. But I do like the idea of being able to change my primary email address without having to go through all of the trouble, and so will all of your less tech savvy friends. (And email forwarding sucks; it's too brittle and problematic in this modern age.)

Email Sender Impact

At first glance, it looks as though there's not much to worry about here from an email sender's perspective. If a user "changes" their email address per the described process, email to the old address continues to deliver. As far as you know, nothing has changed. No mail is about to start bouncing.

I suppose there's an opportunity for confusion. If a user changes the address and signs up for your email list from the new address, and you've still got them subscribed at the old address, then they could end up receiving two copies of every email you send them.

This is New Functionality

There's some confusion about this out in the world; people are saying, isn't this just the email alias functionality that Google already has? Or what about this Gmail feature that allows you to send as an email alias? These are different features. Here's what they do:

• Add or delete an alternate email address (email alias): This explains how Google Workspace Gmail users (meaning, people who are paying to host their domain's email on Gmail) can create and manage email aliases. It's valuable functionality. I use it all the time. It lets me create an alias, like, alias@wombatmail.com and have mail to that address land in my "real" inbox at me@wombatmail.com automatically. But, this has nothing to do with "@gmail.com" email accounts.
• Send emails from a different address or alias: It's easy for folks to get confused by this one. Gmail allows you to configure address1@gmail.com to send email as address2@gmail.com, but only if you own both address1 and address2 already. This has nothing to do with creating a new account, changing an account names, or creating a new email address alias. Instead, it allows you to send email as an address you already own, as long as you can prove that you own it.

TL;DR? Neither of these are the same feature.

More to come

Stay tuned; I’ll keep an eye out for this option in my own Gmail account, and share my first hand experience with it, when the time comes.

Read more: Google says it is ‘gradually rolling out’ option to change your @gmail.com address (Ben Schoon, 9to5Google)