Why Gmail won’t do IMAP
October 4, 2007
I think we can all admit that Google is known for being smart. They’re also known for great web apps, search, and pioneering context sensitive ads online. Their Gmail service is no exception; any geek worth their salt has a gmail.com address, and most of us love it.
There are few drawbacks to Google’s mail service, but among those few problems is a giant elephant in the corner — no IMAP access. It’s such a seemingly glaring oversight, yet most people don’t stop to think about it, saying “they offer POP; isn’t that good enough?” Anyone who has tried to sync multiple machines with email knows how bad POP can be in this situation. They also know how slow it is and how IMAP utterly destroys it in terms of features. So why would Google, king of simplicity and revered by web users the world over restrict us to POP or their web client?
Simple: Google wants you on the web. Period. POP is provided merely as a backup mechanism to satisfy those who cry insecurity at the thought of trusting their email to a totally third party service. We’ll never see IMAP though, for these reasons:
- Google wants you viewing their ads. Context sensitivity with email is a great asset for them. Letting you view your mail in an external IMAP client eliminates this revenue stream.
- Moving you away from a ‘thick client’ helps move you towards all of Google’s other services. This is one way to pry Outlook and Thunderbird-like apps from your hands and ease you into using the web for everything.
- IMAP would be expensive. Think of all the people who would drop using the Gmail interface in favor of their favorite IMAP client. Now imagine the bandwidth crush this would put on their servers, lacking the shield of the web front end and ajax support. Using their web client allows them to control the amount of bandwidth, connections, and behavior of their users.
Sorry to say, but we’ll probably never see a Gmail IMAP option. For those of us truly wanting for it, however, there are options like this.
[edit]
UPDATE: Google has released IMAP for Gmail! I’m eating my hat 
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October 4th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
I actually don’t want to download all my gmail because I have tons of it (almost a gig) and because Google is better at searching it than FIrefox. At first I thought the no-IMAP thing was bad, but now I much prefer using the web UI.
October 4th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
But with IMAP, you need not download anything but the headers — about the same amount of traffic as the web interface would give you anyway. Plus, it can be cached.
I don’t mind the web UI, really. It’s nice, fast, etc. But I’d like to be able to use IMAP if I want to.
October 6th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
I came to this blog through dzone.com But for some reason, they took down the link. I guess they censor the content of you post.
It used to be here, now just a forward message.
http://www.dzone.com/links/why_gmail_wont_do_imap.html
Thanks for the nice argument. I think you’re dead on.
October 16th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
You’re missing two huge reasons why gmail doesn’t support IMAP. The first is the biggest, I believe — IMAP uses folders, and gmail uses tags.
One of the key features with IMAP is that the folder structure you use on the server can be mirrored in your client(s). But the tag system in gmail isn’t the same as a folder system — it doesn’t translate well. If you’ve slapped four different tags on an email, should it show up in all four folders, as though you’d made copies?
Here’s the other issue — 99% of the population hasn’t got a clue what IMAP is, or why they should care about it. They’ve heard of POP3 before, so they know to ask about that, but most people aren’t asking Google for more. If their customers aren’t asking for it, why should they provide it?
October 16th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
That’s a great point, Earl — Google wants users to get away from folders and into the tagging and searching world of mail management. I agree that it doesn’t translate well to a thick client, at least any out there at the moment, but it doesn’t preclude offering IMAP. Having everything in just the Inbox / Sent / Junk boxes would be sufficient for most.
I disagree that that Google’s customers aren’t asking for IMAP, though. That’s evidenced by the popularity of this post, and the number of workarounds out there. People have a favorite client and they’ll push to be able to use Google’s spam filtering, storage, etc, outside of their webmail. If necessity is the mother of invention, then the interest is there.
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:19 pm
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ctx=%67mail&hl=en&answer=75726
October 24th, 2007 at 7:29 am
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