Gmail now lets you send emails to Google+ profiles

Continuing its integration of Google+ into just about everyone of its other products, today Google announced a nice improvement to Gmail that will auto suggest Google+ contacts. Gmail already displayed Google+ information next to emails, allowed you to search for emails by Circles, and keep your contacts up to date using Google+ data, but up until now you couldn’t select a Google+ contact as a recipient when composing an email. While Gmail will now auto suggest Google+ contacts when composing a new email, it also has a new setting to control who can reach you and see your email address:

As you can tell from the example above, these emails work a bit differently so that your email address is only shared with the people you want. Your email address isn’t visible to a Google+ connection unless you send that person an email, and likewise, that person’s email address isn’t visible to you unless they send you an email. 

Google also notes that when you receive one of these emails it will appear in Gmail’s Primary inbox if you have the person circled, but otherwise it will land in your Social inbox alongside the rest of the social network related emails you never check. The feature should land for all within a few days.