[parennoob]

"disabling IMAP would drive away huge numbers of users" -- Why? Ask 10 random people on the street in any large American city if they've ever heard of Gmail, and then if they have ever heard of IMAP. Fair chance the numbers will be something like 8 and (maybe) 1 on average.

On the other hand, disabling IMAP will make sure that people have to look at the webapp, and tie into the Google ecosystem to read their mail. Looking forward five more years, you might even have to have a Google+ account to read your email.

[ceph_]

Just because they don't know what the acronym is doesn't mean they don't use it. Ask if they read the mail sent to their gmail address through outlook or the mail app on their iphone.

[smileysteve]

ask people if they use Apple Maik (on iPhone too) and that drastically changes

[parennoob]

Possibly there might be obvious technical hurdles I'm missing here, but why wouldn't Google just release a Gmail app for the iPhone?

[yscale]

They already did, but many people are satisfied with the Apple app and wouldn't appreciate being forced to switch to a different and not-meaningfully-better app.

[ucpete]

You got it. For me, I like getting my personal and work emails pushed to my iPhone in the same place (the Mail app). Though I have the Gmail app I don't use it.

[krrrh]

I only keep the gmail app around for search, because the way gmail or iphone Mail.app implement IMAP search is not so good.

[deelowe]

Because of iphone.

[parennoob]

Wouldn't Google just release a "Gmail" app for the iPhone / Windows Phone?

[thrownaway2424]

There already is one.

[vxNsr]

Not for Windows Phone there isn't, and they probably won't release one.

[edwintorok]

Or they could forward all their Google email to another email provider that does offer IMAP.