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The email address is not displayed on the profile page.

A user can customize his or her profile URL with an email address. The settings page clearly states that the email address is publicly discoverable if the email address is used in the profile URL.

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Shouldn't I be allowed to customize my profile URL with a string other than my email address? Why force me to expose my email if I want something other than a 21-character numeric id?

I suspect that Google used email addresses because they already have tools for managing that namespace.

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