Dante D’Orazio at The Verge:
You no longer need someone’s email address to send them an email. At least, that will soon be the case if you want to email another Google+ user. A new Gmail “feature” will let you simply type in anyone’s name into Gmail’s “to” field and send them an email. Google announced the new Google+ integration on its Gmail blog today, but company representatives have clarified to The Verge that — by default — anyone on its social network will be able to send messages to your Gmail inbox.
Click through to read the full details. It’s not as awful as it sounds. Still pretty awful, just not as awful.