Interestingly, this is now a curse, as common usernames receive tons of misdirected emails for people who mistakenly put down the wrong email.

My email is last.first and someone out there has the same first.last. We aren’t related AFAIK. Anyway, there’s been a few conversations we’ve had over the years where some doc or something has put in the wrong email and we forward the appropriate email or delete it. We’ve never had a serious conversation or anything, just “uh hey, did you get this email?”

I understood FOMO in the context of this thread to mean that Gmail got its users by hyping it up, whereas I would say Gmail got its users simply by being so much better than the alternatives. There was FOMO, but not due to any strategy at Google to cause FOMO in order to increase hype, in order to increase number of users.

Or at least that is my unsubstantiated opinion.