If you are anything like me, you gave your digital soul to Google long before Android came out. Your email, contacts, document, webspace, and so much more. One of the critical benefits to Android is the deep integration with Google’s products, integration which can not be found anywhere else. If you had not already given everything to Google, you were given a really good reason to when you first picked up an Android phone. Unfortunately, that deep integration comes at a price that, while it may not affect everyone, will eventually affect a significant enough group of people to cause a very serious problem.
Part of your Google Integration is binding your email address to the Android Market. This allows you to bring all of your information to any Android device simply by signing in. One of the benefits of FroYo included data backup and application recovery. Sign in to any Android 2.2 device, and your backed up applications will begin installation immediately. It’s a significant feature, though one with a severe drawback. The binding to the Android Market makes it impossible for you to change your email address. The second you sign into Android with a Gmail address, your apps are bound to that email address.
This may not seem like a problem for many, and at first glance even I thought it was pretty trivial. However, let’s say that when you got your G1, you enjoyed using “rainbowpedobear666@gmail.com”. Now, two years later, you have decided that you would really like to grow up a little bit, and have a more adult sounding Gmail or Gchat or Google Voice. Well, tough luck, according to Google. If you have purchased apps, those apps only exist legitimately via that log in. If you use that log in to get your apps, Android will use that as the default log in for Gchat, and not allow you to use another on the native Gchat client. You will never get away from rainbowpedobear666, as long as you use Android.
Of course, there are alternatives. You could log in to rainbowpedobear666, and add another Gmail to the log in, use Fring or something similar for the Gchat you want to use, and disable syncing with the original account. Additionally, several forums have notes from application developers that claim that if you email application developers with your receipt, and re-purchase the app under the new name, the developer will disable the purchase on the first log in and give the money back for that purchase. That MIGHT work for small numbers of apps, but in my case, the over $100 across 75 apps in my downloads folder is simply too much work to expect to recover anything.
I view this as a problem that will become significant in the future. I am sure that there are not many people currently with an issue like mine. However, as more and more high school and college level students pick up Android devices, I suspect that there will be more rainbowpedobear666’s in the future, and sincerely hope that Google acts quickly to make migrating from one account to another a reasonable and practical experience.
