Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by bound008 254 days ago
I'm not one to defend google, but it seems that they are only ending support for POP accounts, and retaining support for IMAP/SMTP. Seems like a reasonable deprecation for 2025, although they could have given more than a quarter to let people handle the change.
4 comments
bigwheels 254 days ago
But why do they need to remove the functionality? It's been working fine for around 2 decades.

As a user of the feature, this is supremely annoying. They didn't even send me a warning message it will be discontinued.

link
warp 253 days ago
Google nowadays just seems afraid to store personal data. Google have moved your maps history/timeline to be on-device only, seemingly in response to geofence warrants. They're also deprecating health (Google Fit) APIs, and moving that data to be on-device.

So, removing POP (where they need to download emails to their servers), and only supporting IMAP (where emails stay on the third-party server) via their GMail app, that would be consistent with a policy to store as little personal data as possible. (it could also be completely unrelated :)

link
sumanep 253 days ago
IMAP was never supported and is still not supported for external account un gmail web. And they don´t remove pop. You can use pop to access your gmail in any email client or in the app if you wish.
link
cyberax 253 days ago
Likely because one of the backend systems that implements this functionality depends on some deprecated service. And nobody cares enough to port the POP checker to use something new.
link
DominikPeters 253 days ago
They have worded things dishonestly to make you think that POP can be replaced by IMAP. The IMAP support is only available in the mobile app (not gmail.com) and isn't a "fetch" that integrates fetched emails to your Gmail inbox. It's kept as a separate inbox.
link
sumanep 253 days ago
You didn´t understand the article. You can use your gmail with POP or IMAP. What you won´t be able to do is to use POP (IMAP was never an option) to download emails from external account into your gmail account.
link
NetMageSCW 253 days ago
That doesn’t make sense if it is POP to third party accounts because they’ve never supported IMAP to third party accounts.
link