After inability to register a desired username at Gmail, I settled with an alternative. But in years passed I haven't stopped wondering why I can register this screen name with every service, but Gmail.
Recently, this has come up in a conversation with a couple of friends and it resulted in a number of experiments with Gmail registration system. Findings were quite interesting and were leaving more questions than answers. The following are the things that we found:
- 1. Certain male names with prefix 'f1' cannot be registered with Gmail. One would assume they're taken, but they aren't. We've sent test emails to these accounts, but we get back "This Gmail user does not exist". Examples: f1rich, f1richard, f1robert, f1alexander, f1nate, f1sasha.
- 2. Female name with prefix 'f1' can easily be registered and marked as available in ajaxy registration form. Examples: f1sally, f1catherine, f1becky, f1molly, f1britney.
- 3. If you swap 'f1' with 'f2' for male names, names become available.
Why would Google keep these usernames reserved?
Comments
Gmail login system sucks
— DavidThey don't recycle login names. Even if you delete your login, you won't be able to re-register it forever.
I can't find a reason for such thing. It sucks. In 5 years, if you want to register the email with a login like "david", it'll suggest you "da.vv.id.252324.5432.1998@gmail.com".
It's retarded to don't recycle logins.
youtube
— ........i went to make acct on youtube, went to page to choose username, clicked accept, then i clicked back to fill in my postal code, b/c i wanted it in their, then the username wasn't available! i didn't put in a password yet, so i can't recover it, nor did i put in an email
what kind of stupid system does youtube have? shouldn't password be on the same page as the username, bunch of idiots!
i can't register my username
— Anonymousi can't register my username and it doesn't exist :(
Account names are never
— AnonymousAccount names are never recycled. So if the account was once used (the name will never again be available) and later deleted (no longer valid) it would explain the results you got.
I have tried taking several
— AnonymousI have tried taking several very unique names that were unavailable. I always assumed that the email address was already taken, but now I'm not so sure...
I might be wrong, but I think
— f1vladI might be wrong, but I think it's enough to try to send an email to the username that is supposedly unavailable. In my case, it gets bounced. Which tells me that user id is reserved but not used as a regular username. Well in my case it's pretty unique and personal to _myself_, hence it's strange google would reserve that as it's neither dictionary word or any popular word combination. That is what is strange.
My friend and I experimented with it a little bit and found a number of interesting combinations reserved, with no immediate and apparent explanations.
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