The folks over at Download Squad have stumbled across persuasive evidence that Google is adding IMAP support to Gmail. While the option to use IMAP has not showed up in my Gmail account yet (or any other bloggers’ for that matter), they point to this Google help center page, which confirms the speculation. We’ve been tracking new Gmail features for some time; IMAP was the final piece of the puzzle.
IMAP support has been the primary reason I have personally held back from using Gmail for my primary email account. If you don’t know about IMAP, it allows you to manage your email account from different computers and clients without having to worry about replication issues. For example, if you delete an email message in Thunderbird, that message will no longer show up when you use a webmail interface. If you were to use POP – the primary alternative to IMAP – then you would have to manually delete the message from both places because a copy of each message would be downloaded to Thunderbird. Therefore, IMAP provides a much more synchronized solution whereas POP fails to realize that you want to deal with your email once for all points of access.
We’ll have to see how Google plans to monetize Gmail with IMAP, since enabling IMAP means that people like me will almost never bother to use the webmail interface, and therefore never see Google advertisements. Maybe they are betting that most people will simply not use IMAP, or maybe they have other advertising tricks up there sleeves. Perhaps it’s too early to speculate until we actually see this feature enabled for everyone.
Update: It’s official.
My wife and one of my sons have it on their Gmail account…but I’m IMAP-less for now.
I have it as an option on one of my accounts, but not all:
http://img525.i...mailimapig4.gif
I wouldn’t be surprised if GMail starts attaching contextual advertisements based on keywords in email bodies to compensate for those who no longer will use the web interface.
GMail is still a distant third. It’s amusing to see how many people think they’re #1 in the space..
@ The Hater
Opinions are like assholes.
For me, Gmail leads the pack. I can’t stand Yahoo or Hotmail though I am not certain who you think the top two are.
My GMail account opened (Sept 2004) was IMAP enabled today morning when I checked…
It says Forwarding and POP/IMAP on the settings page…
vooohoooo…..
-rocky es
Why are you assuming most people don’t want to use the web interface? The majority of Gmail users are John/Jane Q Public not Fancypants Asshole McStartup. They don’t need enterprise douchebag functionality they just need to be able to organize and search their email. The Gmail interface has, for John and Jane, the best of both:
a) labels for organizing even those emails which you just can’t find the right folder for and b) blazingly fast search even through gigs of email data
Besides, using any desktop apps besides a web browser is so passe
I wonder how long till Yahoo finally gets it and allows POP/IMAP for free Yahoo mail accounts. Lack of POP access was the reason I switched from Yahoo to Gmail
I have it on my iPhone- it’s working smoothly.
I have Gmail working on my Apple Mail and iPhone
It has not been rolled out however for my Google Apps account. 
I have Gmail IMAP working on my Apple Mail and iPhone
It has not been rolled out however for my Google Apps account. 
Well the real interesting thing would be if they would start importing accounts with IMAP to, anyone?
I logged out and back into my gmail account, and the imap option showed up… now it’s on my iphone. huzzah…
I use gmail because of the interface, and push everything into gmail, so IMAP has never been an issue. That said, I can see why many were looking forward to it.
IMAP? POP3? Bah humbug I say.
Learn to use Gmail the right way and it will rock your world.
I never thought in a million years I’d be using web mail as my main email interface, yet here I am, and if you took it away from me, I might just die.
I’ve got IMAP up and running with Mac Mail and everything looks great, from the speed of the sync to the label/folder connection.
One problem I see right away is for users who use gmail’s POP3 feature for non-gmail accounts. While all the messages from all the accounts sync with gmail, the only e-mail address you can send from is your gmail account.
The initial obvious work around here for offline e-mail writing would be to stash messages in the draft folder and then assign the appropriate “from” address when it sync’s into gmail.
I heard about this and thought, “cool, I can use Thunderbird!” — but then I realised that Thunderbird doesn’t thread messages as well as the gmail interface does, so I’m not sure I’d want to use it.
Then I also realised that I haven’t been putting my mail in folders since I started using gmail, since the gmail search is so powerful I don’t need to organise my mail into folders to find anything. So if I used Thunderbird I’d have one big “Archive” folder, and I wouldn’t have search.
So this isn’t really a great feature after all.
I actually chose GMail as my solution (I use Google Apps for my domain) specifically because I couldn’t find a decent IMAP host that fit my various constraints.
I have come to love it and in contrast I now dislike mail clients. I fire up Thunderbird once a week or so, and use GMail’s POP access feature to download my mails for backup purposes only.
I never send from Thunderbird, nor use it to manage mails, it’s purely a straight one-way backup tool.
Mark, if you get IMAP before me I am going to be so p/o’ed — Count on it!!! I have an iPhone, damnit!! I’m special!!!1111one.
@Joe Burnham:
Not true. You can setup different from addresses. Go to Settings -> Accounts -> Send mail as
@5: Third in terms of users, and again, it’s not even close. Opinions on the service itself is up to the user; I meant in terms of traffic. But hey, we all love Google, it’s so great and wonderful and everyone uses it..
Might want to correct the misspelling… “other advertising tricks up there sleeves.” Their/there.
i have set Gmail to archive all mails whenever i download them via POP. I only use gmail pop with my main home computer to fetch the emails, on every other pc/laptop i just use the web interface, so i dont have any duplicate emails.
The downside is that when no internet connection is avaible i can only access the old mails on my home pc, but using imap i couldnt even do that.
This works pretty good, i dont really need imap support.
It’s enabled for two accounts of mine, working on one, the others are still showing the standard Fordwarding and POP screen.
Don’t know what the fuss is about.
Gmail is so powerful on its own, one doesn’t need an email client.
Email clients require about 3 extra steps to access your mail, and then you have to do your own housekeeping with not that great tools anyway.
Gmail is super-efficient and super-organised, with all the tedium taken care of for you. And because it promises not to delete any email ever and provides super-large capacity, there is really no need for a separate mail client.
In fact, I use Gmail as my mail client. I can receive email from other addresses in one Gmail account, and can even specify which email address to use in the From: field when sending (contrary to what one commenter wrote). The conversation threading is cool. And the search mail function is something I use quite often, and it works wonderfully.
Gmail forever!
My Gmail Account is now reporting I have available 4328mb of storage, is that normal ?
Just I’ve never noticed it before ?
I have it.
[Proof]
I’m fine without IMAP but it’s a nice feature to have.
I was waiting for IMAP support on Gmail since long time, I wish they also provide support for Gmail Contacts (Address book) synchronization with IMAP clients.
gMail is so 90s…worst interface ever!
@21
3rd in terms of users is a different story all together. That is a fact.
I don’t know what Google is up to (who on the outside does) but I just have a feeling that they aren’t yet done. There would be a few ways that they could draw more users. Then again that may not be their goal. They live to make money off of ads and they seem to be doing a pretty good job at that.
I look for something more from Google in the next while that will tie the whole thing together in ways that the other two can’t or won’t. Like I said, I can imagine a few things that they could do to convert more people to the Google way.
I was fairly hardcore Yahoo Mail until I got that first Gmail invite. It was over from there for me and I know that there are ways that they could convert others who are less inclined to make a switch.
Then again, like I said, being number one in terms of users may not be their goal. It is about the ads for them.
There is no way to monetize POP service too. So considering this, Google should not worry about Ads. I never saw any ad on my web account
Still no donuts for me …
Want free IMAP today with unlimited storage? Use AIM Mail.
AIM Mail…LOL.
Mark, I’m not sure how one would get numbers to prove it, but anecdotally, I’ve noticed people are increasingly becoming reliant upon the Web interface for chat services. A huge portion of my pals (not techies at all) leave it on at work all day for the chat reason alone.
To answer your other question, I’d imagine Google’s implementing IMAP because of the advantage it will give them in the mobile space. And there will be plenty of ad space on Google’s phone, I bet.
For my final prediction, we should all prepare for a Google Mail desktop client which includes chat and leverages IMAP.
It’s great to hear that IMAP support is finally being rolled out for Gmail. This has been the main reason I have not used any desktop client with my Gmail account. I access mail from several computers so keeping the server and desktops in sync is important to me.
Now, if we could only get HTML signatures in Gmail’s web interface, I would be a happy camper.
If you don’t have Gmail IMAP yet and your default language is not US English, changing Gmail display language to US English in General settings is likely to IMAP enable your Gmail.
Gmail’s web interface is the only way to go. Even with IMAP (which I will use with my desktop) I will still primarily use the web interface. I’m addicted to the keyboard shortcuts.
A question I have is how the IMAP functionality will work with the archiving function within Gmail.
IMAP is a good service. For me, I’m quite comfortable with the webmail interface, that I can access my mails anywhere.
@ Arne
@arne
I use gmail pop the same way. When I download using my outlook client at home, it clears the inbox. When I’m at work, I use the web client. If I delete things from my home outlook, there’s still an archive in “all mail” on gmail. Imap will be nice to have the inbox be the same in both places, but it’s not a requirement.
I just checked an have the IMAP feature for my Gmail account. I enabled it and will test it with Apple Mail tonight. I love webmail, but using a dedicated email client is SOOO much better so I’m stoked they finally implemented it!
So if Gmail is just like any other ISP with POP and IMAP support…what’s the point? I’m getting 50+ GBs of storage space for $5/month with unlimited email address and domains cost $8/year. Google is free, but if I’m using standard desktop clients, the Gmail interface offers almost no value. We’re not talking much money here. Oh, and the ISPs offer Webmail too — without ads. What am I missing here?
I hope they enable this before December when my school IMAP account will expire b/c I graduate!
I use POP3 for gmail now and only use gmail.com when I am on a public computer. Even with IMAP enabled, it would still be the same usage.
In response to James #44: spam filtering.
That is the primary reason I switched to using gmail as my mailbox. I used to run my own mail servers and keep up with spamassassin, virus scanning, etc. but finally just decided to let gmail handle it. I still virtualize my email addresses but gmail is the end point.
http://mail.goo...mp;answer=75726
chris, i just laughed my ass off. fancypants asshole mcdouchebag — nice
OK IMAP=GOOD. Why? BACKUP!!!! if you don’t trust google, like I don’t, you can download all your mail for a old fashioned backup. Also offline access is a no-brainer. Useful for long flights..
Thanks for the link Mark. There is also a great video on how to set up Gmail IMAP for iPhones. Its a little confusing as you have to select Add Other mail account, instead of adding a Gmail account.
http://www.down...or-gmail-video/
I don’t really understand what the fuzz is about. Just because it’s google? Companies like AOL had this for quite a while now (um – 2004?). Has been free since. Personally I treat this as a standard requirement for a decent mail provider. Pop3 is something from the past