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The linked page says that Gmail is discontinuing support for the old Post Office Protocol in favor of IMAP. Nobody has used POP much in years. Decades, maybe.
by Animats 1y ago
The linked page says that Gmail is discontinuing support for the old Post Office Protocol in favor of IMAP. Nobody has used POP much in years. Decades, maybe.
IMAP can check for mail without downloading. But apparently Gmail doesn't support that.
You can do this the other way round. Use a local email client such as Thunderbird on desktop or FastMail on Android to check Gmail and any other email accounts you have.
- belst 1y agoonly the phone app supports imap. the web app does not, it used to support pop
- 12435454344345 1y agoGdiehdis29739237
- NetMageSCW 1y agoI don’t think that is a good way to express it. The gmail service supported POP and any gmail client (e.g. my iOS Mail app) could then get that email. It isn’t about only the web client.
- OJFord 1y agoNo, they're discontinuing POP 'import' (so mail ends up stored in Gmail) configured in the web app and available everywhere, in favour of IMAP client access from the mobile clients only. Fine for some people, not at all equivalent for others. (I'm disinterested, fwiw, haven't used Gmail other than an alumni forwarding address for years.) It's not just a protocol change.
- sumanep 1y agoYou can use pop still, just not to see external emails in gmail web (and you cant use imap either to do that)
- lhamil64 1y agoHuh, apparently I still have a POP3 email setup in Gmail, my old ISP provided email. Mildly annoying that it's going away, but I never use that email anyway so I guess it's not a big deal for me.
- gausswho 1y agoTIL what POP meant after three decades. Thanks!
- cosinetau 1y ago> Nobody has used POP much in years Writing in as a current POP user. I use it to import email every day.
- cosmotic 1y agoI use POP to maintain control over my data.
- mrbluecoat 1y agoThis. I use POP and Thunderbird to download all my email and erase it from their servers so they can't later use it for AI training, ad personalization, persona tracking, etc.
- jasonfarnon 1y agoUnfortunately deleting your email probably doesn't "erase it from their servers". This was the substance of one of the old google location history lawsuits, where "erase my history" only erased your device's access to it. They retain a possibly transformed copy for training etc.
- cortesoft 1y agoYou don’t have an ability to “erase it from their servers”. There is no way to be sure they actually delete anything when you erase it, they could just be hiding the access.
- userbinator 1y agoSpeaking as someone who worked in a large company before (although perhaps not Google-sized), and several smaller ones, they are very motivated to reduce storage costs whenever possible. Sure they could be "just hiding the access" immediately after you request them to delete, but that storage will likely be overwritten soon by something else.
- teo_zero 1y ago> they are very motivated to reduce storage costs whenever possible On the other hand, they are also very motivated to have a large mass of data to train their AI. Which of the two motivations wins, is debatable. Today I'd bet on AI.
- cortesoft 1y agoThe deprecation is about the webmail version of Gmail. You can’t check other accounts while using the web version of Gmail.
- cpncrunch 1y agoIt's a little unclear whether you will still be able to use pop3 on the mobile app or not.
- casenmgreen 1y ago> Nobody has used POP much in years. Decades, maybe. I use it in preference to IMAP, to reduce attack surface; to get my emails off the server and down onto my laptop as quickly as possible. I don't like the idea of leaving all my email on a server.
- sumanep 1y agoThe linked page don't say that. Pop will still be supportedand imap was never an option for adding external accounts in gmail webmail