Drives me insane. And so many people and systems auto adjust addresses, produce almost mine, and then gmail delivers the random output. I once set up a google group to forward mail to.
One person is x.yz@gmail. Tens of times I’ve had people or systems strip the x, I am y.z and get their mail. Invites to funerals. Business mail. Admittedly reduced lately, he probably uses it less.
One professor has a “t” in his name, so “ytz”. People miss the t and send to yz. Dot gets ignored so I get those. I get assignments, or people pleading for extensions. That’s stopped over time.
The stuff is important so I tried hard to get it to the right person. But a bounce to the sender would have been better. It’s a bit wearying to be a post forwarder.
Most of the spam I get is to yz. Some makes it through. I’ve never used that version, ever. I just checked spam now. First 4 messages were to “yz”.
So many mistakes get sent to that version. After many years I tried setting a rule to block that version because it’s definitely not for me, but no go (although maybe that’s why I get less now of the above two examples. I’ll check my rules in the morning). I’ve had the address since the earliest intro-only days so it’s had time to add crud.
johndoe@gmail.com and john.doe@gmail.com are obviously two different addresses. At least for me. I don't see why the first one should receive mails from the second one.
They are two different addresses, think of the second as an alias to the first.
Google creates an alias for every possible combination of dotted email address to your primary.
If you don't want to use the feature, you don't have to. Lots of people find it extremely useful.
It wasn't always that way on gmail. I have a long-lived account and someone else has in the past had a working address of the same words without the dot but always used the @googlemail.com address.
Note: my bit of research into this taught me that the googlemail.com domain is used by Gmail users in Germany, Russia, and Poland where the Gmail trademark was already taken 1. In each case, Google was forced to use “googlemail” and therefore googlemail.com instead. As of 2012, the situation with Germany was straightened out and new users to Gmail there get assigned a gmail.com domain.
I’d pay to block the “full stop ignore” feature.