I doubt that there are likely cases of people having joe.smith@gmail.com and joesmith@gmail.com as distinct accounts, but I would note that for other domains ho

I doubt that there are likely cases of people having joe.smith@gmail.com and joesmith@gmail.com as distinct accounts, but I would note that for other domains hosted via gmail, in my experience, joe.smith@example.com and joesmith@example.com, say, would be treated as distinct mailboxes.