As long as publicly they still use standard SMTP I don't really have a problem with it. Then it's just a personal choice of the person using the service. As a third-party running my own SMTP and IMAP server I can still interact with them normally, it doesn't affect me.
Now if this is one of these "embrace, extend, extinguish" tactics like gmail seems to be doing then yeah obviously it's bad in the long run but I really don't think any other email service but Google's can really pretend to do that.
I think theoretically you can use AMP email through an IMAP client, if that IMAP client supports AMP. But support for it is probably going to be pretty scarce, particularly in the open source world.
> But support for it is probably going to be pretty scarce, particularly in the open source world.
Wouldn't be too sure about that. Even if the more recognizable names all boycott amp4mail, somebody somewhere is bound to decide implementing it as a client or a plugin to a client is a fun/useful project, and will do it. Or Google itself may do it just to push AMP some more.
You're correct. There's nothing about amp4email that requires a Gmail account.
I'm actually pretty sure that if you use an imap client it whatever, you could view amp email from some site without ever communicating with a third party.
It would still need to talk to your email provider's AMP cache, presumably, though, unlike a normal email which you download once and then do not need to reach out to the server for again.
I don't think there's a need for an amp cache with amp4email. The privacy concerns that make an amp cache necessary don't apply in the same way, only the security concerns that require a safe html subset. So an imap client could cache the amp js locally, and render dynamic content by querying the sender directly.
I could be wrong though, but I believe that works.
Now if this is one of these "embrace, extend, extinguish" tactics like gmail seems to be doing then yeah obviously it's bad in the long run but I really don't think any other email service but Google's can really pretend to do that.