I second this. I've used it through Thunderbird to Mail.app and now with Sparrow and haven't had any problems. Even during the web outage a year (or two?) ago,

I second this. I've used it through Thunderbird to Mail.app and now with Sparrow and haven't had any problems. Even during the web outage a year (or two?) ago, IMAP was still up while the web version was down. I've also been using gmail since it was invite-only beta and haven't experienced any major problems through the 7 years I've used it, not sure what everyone is complaining about. Worth noting: I think the original complaint/idea (I think from Gruber or someone similar, I don't remember exactly) was more along the lines of having Twitter offer premium accounts that would never failwhale, and similar equivalents for other web services these days that seem to be falling apart under load. That idea I could understand, just not with Gmail.