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Nornagest comments on Open thread, 7-14 July 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: David_Gerard 07 July 2014 07:14AM

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Comment author: Nornagest 09 July 2014 09:28:19PM *  1 point [-]

There are about three million people with the name Smith in the US. Figure another million or so in other English-speaking countries, a quarter of which have Gmail accounts (might be an underestimation; there are more than 400 million Gmail users), and you're left with a million Smiths using Gmail. How many of them tried that username format? I have no idea, but since there are only 676 possible strings of two Roman letters, it'd have to be less than one in a thousand and change. (Gmail addresses are not case sensitive.) Not holding my breath, in other words.

You might have better luck playing with . breaks between words. I've got the Gmail account firstname.lastname@gmail.com, although I'm blessed with an uncommon surname.

Comment author: philh 10 July 2014 12:43:04PM 5 points [-]

Gmail actually ignores the dots. first.name.last.name@gmail.com and firstnamelastname@gmail.com are treated the same.