[w0rd-driven]

My wife has found this is absolutely not the case for gmail. She consistently gets firstnamelastname emails instead of firstname.lastname which is the one she signed up with.

To test a theory I told her to login as both using the same password. Both go to her gmail account. Logging in without the dot shows the address as still firstname.lastname.

My assumption at the time is during signup Google strips the dot and it's merely there for cosmetic purposes. The RFCs should treat the dots as separate accounts but Google does not.

Just to verify this is still happening, I also have a first.last account and signed in without the dot. When I got into my account it says 'signed in as first.last'.

This may affect accounts created up to a certain point in time though as both accounts are almost as old as gmail. I got invited back during the early days and invited my then girlfriend at the time (now my wife). If this has changed over time it's become way more confusing.

[astura]

If what the GP said is true it sounds like nobody else signed up for the "non dot version" before Google normalized accounts. Gmail would only treat the accounts different if first.last and firstlast weren't the same people.