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The number of people who actually use this feature to fetch mail into their Gmail account in the year 2025 has got to be pretty damn near zero.

mxuribe 1y ago
Yeah, i agree...which adds to my guess that its not *just* about storage...but something else above/beyond storage. In other words, maybe whatever infra is in place to do the fetching, storing, etc...is way more costly than the storage and way too costly to justify for the crazy low numbers that i would agree would still be using POP in this day and age and via gmail.
- xp84 1y ago
  You might be onto something here. Perhaps other mail services have a habit of banning the Google mailfetcher and it takes effort to get it unbanned.
  - mxuribe 1y ago
    > Perhaps other mail services have a habit of banning the Google mailfetcher and it takes effort to get it unbanned. Yeah, that's a perfectly reasonable theory right there!
dotwaffle 1y ago
I know a lot of people who use it, in fact I'm one of them. I have an @gmail.com account with about 20 years of stuff associated with it, from purchases to YouTube subscriptions, from calendars to GCP accounts. However, I use a vanity email (me@somedomain.example) that everyone I know uses to get hold of me. Until about 10 years ago I could just forward emails but that slowly became unworkable as more and more stuff just broke due to SPF etc. So, I've been using POP pickup (and accepting the 5-30 minute delay) ever since. As I understand it, I can't move all my gmail.com data into a GWork profile easily, and POP has worked for years. This is very frustrating.
- jeffbee 1y ago
  "A number" much closer to zero than the the number of Gmail DAUs.
2000UltraDeluxe 1y ago
Working with a client that has thousands of customers using this setup. Common? Perhaps not, but definitely not near zero. Many people are fiercly attached to the Gmail interface, but refuse to pay for Google Workspace, or even manage multiple email accounts in a desktop client.

mxuribe 1y ago

Yeah, i agree...which adds to my guess that its not *just* about storage...but something else above/beyond storage. In other words, maybe whatever infra is in place to do the fetching, storing, etc...is way more costly than the storage and way too costly to justify for the crazy low numbers that i would agree would still be using POP in this day and age and via gmail.

xp84 1y ago
You might be onto something here. Perhaps other mail services have a habit of banning the Google mailfetcher and it takes effort to get it unbanned.
- mxuribe 1y ago
  > Perhaps other mail services have a habit of banning the Google mailfetcher and it takes effort to get it unbanned. Yeah, that's a perfectly reasonable theory right there!

dotwaffle 1y ago

I know a lot of people who use it, in fact I'm one of them. I have an @gmail.com account with about 20 years of stuff associated with it, from purchases to YouTube subscriptions, from calendars to GCP accounts. However, I use a vanity email (me@somedomain.example) that everyone I know uses to get hold of me. Until about 10 years ago I could just forward emails but that slowly became unworkable as more and more stuff just broke due to SPF etc. So, I've been using POP pickup (and accepting the 5-30 minute delay) ever since. As I understand it, I can't move all my gmail.com data into a GWork profile easily, and POP has worked for years. This is very frustrating.

jeffbee 1y ago
"A number" much closer to zero than the the number of Gmail DAUs.

2000UltraDeluxe 1y ago

Working with a client that has thousands of customers using this setup. Common? Perhaps not, but definitely not near zero. Many people are fiercly attached to the Gmail interface, but refuse to pay for Google Workspace, or even manage multiple email accounts in a desktop client.