[lsc]

You see, back when web applications were hopelessly inferior to native applications, we would use a mail client that ran locally on our computer to read email. We could use that same program to check mail across many different email providers... so if we wanted to change email providers, well, we could do that without changing our UI.

These mail clients used standards like pop3 or IMAP to communicate with the mail server. with IMAP, you can check email from multiple devices/computers just as easily as you can with gmail (though, for some reason, most users were confused by IMAP; pop3 was popular long after IMAP was universally available. using pop3 from multiple computers is a huge pain.)

(Of course, this was back before everyone and their dog had their own domain name, so switching email providers was still a huge pain in the ass.)

My suggestion is that everyone pick an IMAP client to handle their email, then switch between providers as-needed.

[aneth4]

You still don't have control over the UI....

What evidence is there that google will ever stop supporting IMAP? What makes you think another provider is not going to stop supporting IMAP, or stop existing at all? What's so hard about switching providers if google does drop IMAP, particularly if you're using your own domain?

[lsc]

>You still don't have control over the UI....

Well, you get to choose your mail client independently of your mail provider.

>What evidence is there that google will ever stop supporting IMAP

I have no solid evidence, of course, but the fact that they've disabled xmmp support on gtalk, to me points at a google attempting to become more of an apple or facebook-style 'walled garden'

(and all along, well, google makes money off showing you ads; if you check mail via IMAP, you aren't reading those ads)

>What's so hard about switching providers if google does drop IMAP, particularly if you're using your own domain?

If you are using IMAP to check your mail, and have your own domain, this isn't hard at all.

My view is that being a mass market IMAP provider wouldn't make all that much sense unless google did turn off IMAP, or unless google otherwise started screwing things up (things, I mean, besides the UI)

However... it's easier to do something if you've been doing it for a while, you know? I haven't seriously sysadmin'd a mailserver for anything but my own company in... almost a decade now. It would take me some time to get up to speed. So yes, if I want to be in a position to swoop in if google disables IMAP, I should probably start now.