alt Hacker News> It was super not worth it. It confused people all the time.
Genuinely interested: was it in the US? Feels like people in the US are more used to having one big service that everybody uses.
I have never seen confusion about my personal email...
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xp84 • 04/04/2025
Yes, exactly. US. Every millennial has Gmail, idk what GenZ does, probably also Gmail. GenX and Boomers probably split between Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, and a few AOLs - and that covers probably 95% of Americans.
It was almost embarrassing for me, I have to admit — especially times when I’d been clever about it and set up, say, [email protected] as a forwarder, and the cashier at Sears needed my email address. They once asked me oh, do you work for Sears?
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I think the confusion was less about the part after the @ not being a major well known service, but not being something that sounds like a company or a service. I think their confusion is that it has my name in it, and people are used to a name going before the @. ...so when I say my name, they're expecting another @.