India, April 1 -- Alphabet Inc.'s Google has finally allowed users to change their primary Gmail address without abandoning the account, in what can be seen as an attempt by the world's largest email service to be as flexible as rivals Outlook and Apple.

The Mountain View, California-based company said US users can now modify the "username" portion of their @gmail.com accounts, which may have been created in their adolescence but no longer reflect their professional lives. Until now, changing a Gmail address required abandoning an existing account altogether and manually migrating years of emails, photos, and third-party logins.

Google's new system treats the shift as a "permanent alias" model. When a user selects a new address, their o...