I've got a friend's birthday coming and I'm tired of buying Amazon email gift codes for him. Am I missing an option for an email gift certificate here, or it really doesn't exist?

Nope. It indeed doesn't exist.

:( Back to Amazon.
Missed opportunity, GoG.

If you know what your friend is into, you can buy a game (or several ones) as a gift. Just check the gift-option while checking out the cart.

Or simply do it like I do:

Write a personal voucher for your friend ("$20 worth of games on GOG.com...") with a nice hand-drawn message etc. and simply ask them what games they would like on/after their birthday :-)

He's one of those huge backlog gentlemen like I am, so picking titles for him would be hard.
Maybe I should just get him whatever I like and I know he doesn't :)

Paysafecard could be one solution, if I understand the service correctly in that you get a card loaded up with a chosen value.

Do they still make Certs?

I had totally forgotten about those. They were way better than Tic-Tacs.

Couldn't he just create a gog.com account, add $ to the wallet, and give his friend the account id and password?

The friend would have to edit the email address, of course.

That's a good idea...but only if his friend doesn't already have a GOG account.

Then just get Jack Keane...

There's bound to be a thousand copies laying around somewhere if you asked nicely...

Although i have my list of recommendations for almost anyone. Not that it would fit them perfectly, but...

Isn't that the "nobody wins" solution? ;D

That's the GOG way of life, buddy...

:-D

I ended up getting him something from his Steam wish list but on GoG mwahahahahaha!

What about gifting a game?

If the person that is receiving the game, already has it, or does not want it, it looks like they can exchange it for another one of similar value.

See here:
https://www.gog.com/support/website_help/money_back_guarantee