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Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP

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Re: Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP

#31

Post by jeffbee »

mxuribe wrote: post #9
jeffbee wrote: post #7

I guess they couldn't find anyone qualified to maintain the mailfetcher.

I wonder if this is a little about storage costs? I mean, at their scale, i imagine the core cost of the actual storage by itself is pretty negligible...but maybe combined with other infra. (beyond storage) that needs to be considered in the total costs related to storing and managing POP pulls...maybe their data shows that it simply wasn't worth it to them to keep said functionality around? But, your comment did mak…

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.

Re: Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP

#32

Post by cosmotic »

Animats wrote: post #3

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.

I use POP to maintain control over my data.

Re: Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP

#33

Post by mxuribe »

jimrandomh wrote: post #19
mxuribe wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this is a little about storage costs? I mean, at their scale, i imagine the core cost of the actual storage by itself is pretty negligible...but maybe combined with other infra. (beyond storage) that needs to be considered in the total costs related to storing and managing POP pulls...maybe their data shows that it simply wasn't worth it to them to keep said functionality around? But, your comment did mak…

They already have a quota and billing framework in place for email storage. If it was about storage costs, I'd expect them to address it through that.

Makes sense.

Re: Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP

#34

Post by mxuribe »

jeffbee wrote: post #31
mxuribe wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this is a little about storage costs? I mean, at their scale, i imagine the core cost of the actual storage by itself is pretty negligible...but maybe combined with other infra. (beyond storage) that needs to be considered in the total costs related to storing and managing POP pulls...maybe their data shows that it simply wasn't worth it to them to keep said functionality around? But, your comment did mak…

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.

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.

Re: Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP

#35

Post by mxuribe »

jjcob wrote: post #18
mxuribe wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this is a little about storage costs? I mean, at their scale, i imagine the core cost of the actual storage by itself is pretty negligible...but maybe combined with other infra. (beyond storage) that needs to be considered in the total costs related to storing and managing POP pulls...maybe their data shows that it simply wasn't worth it to them to keep said functionality around? But, your comment did mak…

Maybe it causes too many issues? POP is pretty unpredictable when multiple clients access the same server.

Yeah, that would be a good point...like, maybe its not just about cost, but more trouble than its worth. On another comment i made here, i wondered if its not just storage costs, but costs or *annoyance* of running infra. that oversees the fetching, the storage, yada, yada...al for POP, whose users leveraging said functionality are crazy low.

Re: Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP

#36

Post by jp191919 »

mustaphah wrote: post #17
flakeoil wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or forward your gmail to another proper email domain.

I just can't live without the Gmail spamfilter. It's just the best. Industry-leading; no question.

I control spam by using email aliases. And it makes it easy to track exactly who leaked/sold my email address. But I don't use gmail, as I value my privacy.

Re: Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP

#37

Post by sixhobbits »

jimrandomh wrote: post #12

I can't tell whether I use this; the description in the article sort-of matches a feature I use, but not exactly. The feature I use is labelled "Check mail from other accounts" and appears in the "Accounts and Import" tab in Gmail web; it causes Gmail to periodically retrieve emails from an external server using POP, and merge them into my main inbox. This article refers to the option "Check mail from other accounts"…

I use exactly this on my personal (free) and work (paid workspace) accounts. I got an official notification from Google that one member in my workspace (me) has used the feature in the last 30 days and will be affected. I didn't (yet) get a notification on my personal account.

I also rely pretty heavily on this feature for a few very low traffic domains that I need but only have super set up on super clunky web mail, so I guess I'm in the market for a new mail client :(

Re: Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP

#39

Post by xp84 »

herczegzsolt wrote: post #10

This will be a major inconvenience for migrating mail accounts. I used the POP feature a lot to get mails from one account to the other without requiring a client to do the dirty work. A migration is still possible, but needing to keep a client up and running to push up mails via IMAP will be a major painpoint.

This sounds like an opportunity for a cool open source project: A container which checks a given POP account every few minutes, and copies the message into an IMAP server of your choice.

Re: Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP

#40

Post by xp84 »

mxuribe wrote: post #34
jeffbee wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.
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