While looking at a spam message I received on my Gmail account, I noticed the "to" field was missing a dot in my email name, with the notice "(Yes, this is you. Learn more)" right beside it.
"Because Gmail doesn't recognize dots as characters within usernames, adding or removing dots from a Gmail address won’t affect which account receives messages. Messages sent to yourusername@gmail.com and y.o.u.r.u.s.e.r.n.a.m.e@gmail.com are all delivered to your Inbox, and only yours."
I didn't know that, and it's a great idea! It also means they thought about this feature from the very beginning.