Gmail e-mail address "feature" confirmed

From the Gmail Help Center, we learn that Gmail "doesn't recognize dots" within usernames. So to Google's mail server, eric.bangeman[at]gmail.com and ericbangeman[at]gmail.com appear the same.

This Gmail "feature" routed mail we sent to different variations of our test account to the same inbox. At least Gmail respects the period when it comes to logging into Gmail accounts. That means eric.bangeman can't log into ericbangeman's account, even though he'll be getting some of his e-mail. In theory, however, the ericbangeman account shouldn't exist if the other account is already created, because Google ignores the periods when looking at available usernames.

I guess it's still in beta for a reason, but I wonder how Google will respond to this. The simplest course of action appears to be tell the mail server about periods and all their wonderful uses, viz. separating parts of a username and distinguishing it from other usernames with identical occurrences and combinations of alphanumeric characters. Why would you want to get e-mail that isn't sent to you, anyway?