For a long time, Gmail was used as a large universal mailbox. We could send messages from Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL or professional addresses, using the POP3 protocol. POP3, to put it simply, works like a vacuum cleaner: Gmail connects to another mail server, downloads new messages, then stores them in your Gmail inbox. Once sucked up, these emails become Gmail messages “like any other”: same filters, same antispam, same search. It is precisely this function that disappears.
The end of Gmail’s email vacuum
IMAP, often cited as an alternative, is based on a very different logic. Where POP3 fetches messages, IMAP acts as a remote window. The emails remain stored on the original server, and the client (Gmail, a mobile app or software) only displays them. We read, we classify, we delete, but everything happens on the external server. Hence the confusion: Gmail will continue to display IMAP accounts, but without ever importing their messages into your main Gmail box. No merging, no unified filtering, no magic.
Officially, Google has not elaborated much on the reasons for this decision. Unofficially, a technical point often comes up: POP3 involves storing and sending passwords in the clear. A practice that is less and less tolerated in the age of enhanced authentication and security keys. Seen from this angle, the decision is coherent. But it comes at a bad time for those who had built solid uses around this function. Centralization of accounts, reading comfort, extremely effective anti-spam… Gmail did most of the work.
For professional or business users, the only truly viable alternative is to return to in-house IMAP hosting. Each employee would have their own account on an internal server, viewable via the Gmail application or another client. But this choice implies taking responsibility for everything: massive storage, quota management, anti-spam filtering less effective than that of Gmail, and much heavier daily maintenance. It is a technical step backwards, costly in time and energy, far from the promise of simplicity which made Gmail successful as a universal mailbox.
For many “general public” users, the impact will be limited. But for those who used Gmail as a control center for multiple addresses, the change is real. The simplest solution is often to revert to a local email client, like Thunderbird, capable of handling POP3, IMAP and many other protocols without depending on the decisions of an online service.
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