On March 31, Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOGL) CEO Sundar Pichai shared the latest update regarding Gmail addresses on X.
While a user might once have created a username made up of random characters, they can now go to their Google account settings and choose any name available, the billionaire said.
“You’ll keep your old username and you can sign in with both,” Pichai added.
The service is rolling out to all users but the option may not be available to everyone right now.
Once you create a new username, the previous one will become an alternate email address. You’ll receive emails to both your old and new addresses.
Note that you can create only up to three new email addresses that end in gmail.com for your Google account.
The move aims to make Gmail addresses user-friendly so that users don’t have to remember random, messy string of letters.
Crypto wallets still remain hard to remember
The latest development is very much unlike the current crypto ecosystem where users holding virtual assets like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) store them in wallets with long strings of random letters that are hard to remember and easy to mistype.
It is crucial that you properly remember your crypto wallet address as it is and pay extra attention during transactions.
If you mistakenly share a wrong address with a sender, the crypto funds you are supposed to receive could land in another person’s wallet. Such instances are not uncommon and bad actors frequently exploit such scenarios to steal funds.
Not immediately, developers working in the crypto industry could find inspiration in the latest Gmail update and work toward helping users create simpler wallet addresses.
The move would only make the crypto ecosystem faster and easier.
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New Google warning
Meanwhile, Google recently published a whitepaper that warned a quantum system could be powerful enough in a few years to target real-time Bitcoin transactions.
A crypto wallet address is nothing but the short hash of a public key, an encoded text that enables a user to receive crypto assets into their wallet.
During a Bitcoin transaction, the public key is revealed for a brief period. A powerful quantum system can use the public key to find the private key and steal the crypto funds, the paper warned.
In fact, it could crack a Bitcoin transaction in about nine minutes, it further added.
Though it’s not an immediate threat, Google recommended a migration to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) to address the potential risks to cryptocurrencies in the future.