To get a little philosophical, there's a kind of "lack of self" inherent in minimizing oneself into a normalized default like GMail. Someone with a common name

To get a little philosophical, there's a kind of "lack of self" inherent in minimizing oneself into a normalized default like GMail. Someone with a common name ends up being "bob.jones.23@gmail.com" - and if you were the first "bob.jones", you will get no end of messages erroneously addressed to you and consequent exposure to the secrets of the others. The irony is that because email is so broken as an open platform, this normalized default so prone to collision has become the legitimate one, and everything else is filtered out...just like what tends to happen in other domains of society. It's easy upfront, but we're finally getting past the initial adoption of these technologies, and overall quality of service - from initial UX to issues like these - is going to become an increasingly large factor.