On the server side, as long as the application is behaving well,
everything should work normally. However, if a bug in the application
triggers multiple registrations for the same device, it can be hard to
reconcile state and you might end up with duplicate messages.
GCM provides a facility called “canonical registration IDs” to easily
recover from these situations. A canonical registration ID is defined
to be the ID of the last registration requested by your application.
This is the ID that the server should use when sending messages to the
device.
If later on you try to send a message using a different registration ID, GCM will process the request as usual, but it will include the canonical registration ID in the registration_id field of the response. Make sure to replace the registration ID stored in your server with this canonical ID, as eventually the ID you’re using will stop working.