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Google officially announces OAuth support for IMAP/SMTP Gmail

108 points by csallen 17y ago

dotBen 17y ago
This is great news. I blogged about this back in October - glad to see Google have taken this issue on. http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2009/10/my-gmail-password-scares-me-with-its-power/ http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2009/10/my-gmail-password-scares... It will be interesting to see how successful adoption of IMAP-via-OAuth will be.
mcav 17y ago
Is there a throttling component to this? I seem to recall that some people used to encounter problems when trying to use a script to access GMail (for backups). I don't see any API limits offhand.
- csallen 17y ago
  Gmail only allows 10 simultaneous IMAP connections to your Gmail account (http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=97150 http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe...), and that isn't changing with this new OAuth news. And based on my experience working on Syphir (https://www.syphir.com https://www.syphir.com), chances are you won't run into any IMAP throttling problems based the frequency of your access. Syphir makes a few IMAP calls per user per incoming email, and we generally haven't run into any problems.
stanleydrew 17y ago
Is this what Gabor Cselle has been working on since moving to Google?
- frognibble 17y ago
  My guess is that this feature was well on the way to completion when Gabor Ceselle rejoined Google a month ago. One month is a short time to develop and launch a feature that spans two teams (user accounts, mail) at a big company like Google.
  - stanleydrew 17y ago
    Yes, I would doubt that this was his idea, but I'm wondering whether this is what he's working on mainly.
petewarden 17y ago
Sweet! I've just updated my PHP example to work with these specs: http://web.mailana.com/labs/handmadeimap/gmailoauthexample/index.php http://web.mailana.com/labs/handmadeimap/gmailoauthexample/i... http://github.com/petewarden/handmadeimap http://github.com/petewarden/handmadeimap There's now also official code in several languages available at http://code.google.com/apis/gmail/oauth/code.html http://code.google.com/apis/gmail/oauth/code.html
fjabre 17y ago
Congrats to Eric Sachs and the rest of the team for getting this out sooner than expected.
sharjeel 17y ago
It won't be long before all protocols would be tunneled over the stateless and rock-solid HTTP protocol which works well across different networks, NATs, behind firewall and on different devices.
lifeisstillgood 17y ago
[redacted till I finish reading what I should have read in first place]

108 points by csallen 17y ago

This is great news. I blogged about this back in October - glad to see Google have taken this issue on. http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2009/10/my-gmail-password-scares-me-with-its-power/ http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2009/10/my-gmail-password-scares... It will be interesting to see how successful adoption of IMAP-via-OAuth will be.

mcav 17y ago

Is there a throttling component to this? I seem to recall that some people used to encounter problems when trying to use a script to access GMail (for backups). I don't see any API limits offhand.

csallen 17y ago
Gmail only allows 10 simultaneous IMAP connections to your Gmail account (http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=97150 http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe...), and that isn't changing with this new OAuth news. And based on my experience working on Syphir (https://www.syphir.com https://www.syphir.com), chances are you won't run into any IMAP throttling problems based the frequency of your access. Syphir makes a few IMAP calls per user per incoming email, and we generally haven't run into any problems.

stanleydrew 17y ago

Is this what Gabor Cselle has been working on since moving to Google?

frognibble 17y ago
My guess is that this feature was well on the way to completion when Gabor Ceselle rejoined Google a month ago. One month is a short time to develop and launch a feature that spans two teams (user accounts, mail) at a big company like Google.
- stanleydrew 17y ago
  Yes, I would doubt that this was his idea, but I'm wondering whether this is what he's working on mainly.

petewarden 17y ago

Sweet! I've just updated my PHP example to work with these specs: http://web.mailana.com/labs/handmadeimap/gmailoauthexample/index.php http://web.mailana.com/labs/handmadeimap/gmailoauthexample/i... http://github.com/petewarden/handmadeimap http://github.com/petewarden/handmadeimap There's now also official code in several languages available at http://code.google.com/apis/gmail/oauth/code.html http://code.google.com/apis/gmail/oauth/code.html

fjabre 17y ago

Congrats to Eric Sachs and the rest of the team for getting this out sooner than expected.

sharjeel 17y ago

It won't be long before all protocols would be tunneled over the stateless and rock-solid HTTP protocol which works well across different networks, NATs, behind firewall and on different devices.

lifeisstillgood 17y ago

[redacted till I finish reading what I should have read in first place]