Periods are invalid characters for group names?

Question

In Gmail usernames, periods are ignored characters, meaning that email sent to [email protected] and [email protected] will go to the same inbox.

I'm trying to setup a Google Group that has periods in its name. However, typing a period in the box for creating the name generates an error of Contains invalid characters:

I cannot find the requirement for Google Groups to not contain periods documented anywhere, and I'm wondering if this is a temporary error by Google or a permanent, intentional policy.

Answer 1

Google has not disclosed which characters are or not allowed in Google Groups emails addresses. The corresponding help article just says the following

Create a group & choose group settings

Group email	Enter an email address for the group. If more than one domain is displayed, select the appropriate domain from the list. Follow these guidelines: Email addresses can be up to 63 characters long. This limit doesn't include the domain portion of the address, such as @gmail.com.

Regarding the use of dots in Gmail, they are related to a Gmail feature that, I think will be fair to call innovative and unique, dot aliases. While users can set an email address using dots on Gmail account creation, Gmail automatically sets the name without dots as an alias (let's keep this discussion informal here). Google Groups doesn't support dot aliases. Proof? The Google Groups (for consumers) documentation doesn't mention that aliases are supported.