[gonyea]

Uh, you realize that imap support has been in GMail for its entire history?

[kalleboo]

Google Talk had XMPP support for its entire history... until they killed it

[ceejayoz]

So?

Doesn’t mean they can’t get rid of it.

[michaelmrose]

Getting rid of say outlook support would greatly weaken Gmail.

Furthermore if you have an up to date sync on the day imap support ends then you have all your email and need face only changing over to a new address or if you already use a custom domain logging on and changing the email provider.