[HN Gopher] Gmail will no longer support checking emails from th...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party
       accounts via POP
        
       Author : sumanep
       Score  : 601 points
       Date   : 2025-10-01 16:25 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (support.google.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (support.google.com)
        
       | satisfice wrote:
       | goddamn it
        
       | Animats wrote:
       | The linked page says that Gmail is discontinuing support for the
       | old Post Office Protocol in favor of IMAP. Nobody has used POP
       | much in years. Decades, maybe.
       | 
       | IMAP can check for mail without downloading. But apparently Gmail
       | doesn't support that.
       | 
       | You can do this the other way round. Use a local email client
       | such as Thunderbird on desktop or FastMail on Android to check
       | Gmail and any other email accounts you have.
        
         | belst wrote:
         | only the phone app supports imap. the web app does not, it used
         | to support pop
        
           | 12435454344345 wrote:
           | Gdiehdis29739237
        
           | NetMageSCW wrote:
           | I don't think that is a good way to express it. The gmail
           | service supported POP and any gmail client (e.g. my iOS Mail
           | app) could then get that email. It isn't about only the web
           | client.
        
         | OJFord wrote:
         | No, they're discontinuing POP 'import' (so mail ends up stored
         | in Gmail) configured in the web app and available everywhere,
         | in favour of IMAP client access from the mobile clients only.
         | 
         | Fine for some people, not at all equivalent for others. (I'm
         | disinterested, fwiw, haven't used Gmail other than an alumni
         | forwarding address for years.) It's not just a protocol change.
        
           | sumanep wrote:
           | You can use pop still, just not to see external emails in
           | gmail web (and you cant use imap either to do that)
        
         | lhamil64 wrote:
         | Huh, apparently I still have a POP3 email setup in Gmail, my
         | old ISP provided email. Mildly annoying that it's going away,
         | but I never use that email anyway so I guess it's not a big
         | deal for me.
        
         | gausswho wrote:
         | TIL what POP meant after three decades. Thanks!
        
         | cosinetau wrote:
         | > Nobody has used POP much in years
         | 
         | Writing in as a current POP user. I use it to import email
         | every day.
        
         | cosmotic wrote:
         | I use POP to maintain control over my data.
        
           | mrbluecoat wrote:
           | This.
           | 
           | I use POP and Thunderbird to download all my email and erase
           | it from their servers so they can't later use it for AI
           | training, ad personalization, persona tracking, etc.
        
             | jasonfarnon wrote:
             | Unfortunately deleting your email probably doesn't "erase
             | it from their servers". This was the substance of one of
             | the old google location history lawsuits, where "erase my
             | history" only erased your device's access to it. They
             | retain a possibly transformed copy for training etc.
        
             | cortesoft wrote:
             | You don't have an ability to "erase it from their servers".
             | There is no way to be sure they actually delete anything
             | when you erase it, they could just be hiding the access.
        
               | userbinator wrote:
               | Speaking as someone who worked in a large company before
               | (although perhaps not Google-sized), and several smaller
               | ones, they are very motivated to reduce storage costs
               | whenever possible. Sure they could be "just hiding the
               | access" immediately after you request them to delete, but
               | that storage will likely be overwritten soon by something
               | else.
        
               | teo_zero wrote:
               | > they are very motivated to reduce storage costs
               | whenever possible
               | 
               | On the other hand, they are also very motivated to have a
               | large mass of data to train their AI.
               | 
               | Which of the two motivations wins, is debatable. Today
               | I'd bet on AI.
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | Training off data you _published_ for public consumption,
               | e.g. pretty much user-generated content on social media,
               | or anything publicly accessible on the web, is one thing.
               | Training off private conversations is a whole different
               | thing. I doubt any major company is doing the latter.
               | Would be a PR and legal firestorm. Which doesn 't serve
               | the interests of companies training AI models either.
        
               | dwayne_dibley wrote:
               | Would you really put it past them? Gmail is after all a
               | free service.
        
         | cortesoft wrote:
         | The deprecation is about the webmail version of Gmail. You
         | can't check other accounts while using the web version of
         | Gmail.
        
           | cpncrunch wrote:
           | It's a little unclear whether you will still be able to use
           | pop3 on the mobile app or not.
        
             | cortesoft wrote:
             | I think you can, but those emails are only going to exist
             | on your phone, though. They aren't imported into your Gmail
             | account itself.
        
               | cpncrunch wrote:
               | Yeah, that's fine for my needs. Just hoping it will
               | continue to work that way.
        
         | casenmgreen wrote:
         | > Nobody has used POP much in years. Decades, maybe.
         | 
         | I use it in preference to IMAP, to reduce attack surface; to
         | get my emails off the server and down onto my laptop as quickly
         | as possible.
         | 
         | I don't like the idea of leaving all my email on a server.
        
         | sumanep wrote:
         | The linked page don't say that. Pop will still be supportedand
         | imap was never an option for adding external accounts in gmail
         | webmail
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | I thought they would _want_ us sucking down our external mail
       | into their system to keep us inside the wall with scannable data.
       | What the heck.
        
         | righthand wrote:
         | There's probably a security issue and the product owner can't
         | figure out how to vibe code their way out.
        
       | jeffbee wrote:
       | I guess they couldn't find anyone qualified to maintain the
       | mailfetcher.
        
         | mxuribe wrote:
         | I wonder if this is a little about storage costs? I mean, at
         | their scale, i imagine the core cost of the actual storage by
         | itself is pretty negligible...but maybe combined with other
         | infra. (beyond storage) that needs to be considered in the
         | total costs related to storing and managing POP pulls...maybe
         | their data shows that it simply wasn't worth it to them to keep
         | said functionality around? But, your comment did make me
         | chuckle a little! :-)
        
           | jjcob wrote:
           | Maybe it causes too many issues? POP is pretty unpredictable
           | when multiple clients access the same server.
        
             | mxuribe wrote:
             | Yeah, that would be a good point...like, maybe its not just
             | about cost, but more trouble than its worth. On another
             | comment i made here, i wondered if its not just storage
             | costs, but costs or *annoyance* of running infra. that
             | oversees the fetching, the storage, yada, yada...al for
             | POP, whose users leveraging said functionality are crazy
             | low.
        
           | jimrandomh wrote:
           | They already have a quota and billing framework in place for
           | email storage. If it was about storage costs, I'd expect them
           | to address it through that.
        
             | mxuribe wrote:
             | Makes sense.
        
           | jeffbee wrote:
           | The number of people who actually use this feature to fetch
           | mail into their Gmail account in the year 2025 has got to be
           | pretty damn near zero.
        
             | mxuribe wrote:
             | Yeah, i agree...which adds to my guess that its not *just*
             | about storage...but something else above/beyond storage. In
             | other words, maybe whatever infra is in place to do the
             | fetching, storing, etc...is way more costly than the
             | storage and way too costly to justify for the crazy low
             | numbers that i would agree would still be using POP in this
             | day and age and via gmail.
        
               | xp84 wrote:
               | You might be onto something here. Perhaps other mail
               | services have a habit of banning the Google mailfetcher
               | and it takes effort to get it unbanned.
        
               | mxuribe wrote:
               | > Perhaps other mail services have a habit of banning the
               | Google mailfetcher and it takes effort to get it
               | unbanned.
               | 
               | Yeah, that's a perfectly reasonable theory right there!
        
             | dotwaffle wrote:
             | I know a lot of people who use it, in fact I'm one of them.
             | 
             | I have an @gmail.com account with about 20 years of stuff
             | associated with it, from purchases to YouTube
             | subscriptions, from calendars to GCP accounts.
             | 
             | However, I use a vanity email (me@somedomain.example) that
             | everyone I know uses to get hold of me. Until about 10
             | years ago I could just forward emails but that slowly
             | became unworkable as more and more stuff just broke due to
             | SPF etc. So, I've been using POP pickup (and accepting the
             | 5-30 minute delay) ever since.
             | 
             | As I understand it, I can't move all my gmail.com data into
             | a GWork profile easily, and POP has worked for years. This
             | is very frustrating.
        
               | jeffbee wrote:
               | "A number" much closer to zero than the the number of
               | Gmail DAUs.
        
             | 2000UltraDeluxe wrote:
             | Working with a client that has thousands of customers using
             | this setup. Common? Perhaps not, but definitely not near
             | zero.
             | 
             | Many people are fiercly attached to the Gmail interface,
             | but refuse to pay for Google Workspace, or even manage
             | multiple email accounts in a desktop client.
        
         | commandersaki wrote:
         | Yeah it is either that or the bean counters realised this is an
         | expense with very little upshot.
        
       | mustaphah wrote:
       | A quick hack: forward @yourdomain.com emails to your Gmail (e.g,
       | Cloudflare Email Routing).
       | 
       | Outbound emails sent via "Send mail as:" using SMTP remain
       | unaffected.
        
         | flakeoil wrote:
         | Or forward your gmail to another proper email domain.
        
           | mustaphah wrote:
           | I just can't live without the Gmail spamfilter. It's just the
           | best. Industry-leading; no question.
        
             | nulbyte wrote:
             | Gmail regularly lets through spam, including backscatter
             | spam from mail sent to the google.com domain spoofing Gmail
             | users. Industry-leading is not the term I would use to
             | describe their spam heuristics.
             | 
             | Grey listing has been far more effective at stopping spam
             | than some half-baked AI garbage from Google.
        
               | mustaphah wrote:
               | Not ideal - can't disagree. Still, it's the industry
               | leader. I'm not aware of a better spamfilter.
               | 
               | Grey listing doesn't scale; not for me.
        
               | akkartik wrote:
               | I forward everything including spam to Fastmail. Their
               | spam filter is absolutely fine. This way I don't need to
               | check for false positives in 2 places. You're probably
               | losing one genuine message a year if you don't check your
               | Gmail spam folder.
        
               | nottorp wrote:
               | Hmm. Not really. I run greylisting on my personal domain
               | which is extremely low traffic and lately I'm getting
               | like 4-5 spams per day that obey it correctly.
               | 
               | Which is more than the non spam emails that come on it :)
        
             | xandrius wrote:
             | Have you tried other things? And not saying just Microsoft.
        
               | mustaphah wrote:
               | Proton Mail is good (just not as good), but you can't
               | integrate external SMTP for outbound emails; you have to
               | pay to send from @yourdomain.com.
               | 
               | With Gmail, you can configure an external SMTP server
               | using "Send mail as" setting. Super convenient. Tons of
               | mail services offer a generous free tier for personal use
               | (e.g., Mailgun 100 emails/day).
               | 
               | It's not really worth paying just to send a few personal
               | emails from @yourdomain.com each month.
        
             | jp191919 wrote:
             | I control spam by using email aliases. And it makes it easy
             | to track exactly who leaked/sold my email address. But I
             | don't use gmail, as I value my privacy.
        
               | mustaphah wrote:
               | I do aliases as well. Never enough. A battle-tested
               | spammer would run s/+[^@]*// on the address before
               | sending.
        
               | lentil_soup wrote:
               | I have my own domain and just do <website-
               | name>@mydomain.com and redirect everything to the same
               | inbox sorted in folders.
               | 
               | Works pretty well, if any of those addresses gets into
               | some spam list I just block it (hasn't happened yet,
               | though)
        
               | mustaphah wrote:
               | Catch-all (*) setup is the best, until a spammer hits a
               | gibberish localpart (on purpose) and your domain
               | cheerfully accepts it.
               | 
               | Don't get me wrong, I use catch-all too (don't tell
               | spammers).
        
               | layer8 wrote:
               | I whitelist using regular expressions (specific prefixes
               | mostly). Gibberish and random localparts are unlikely to
               | match those, it effectively never happens.
        
               | zamadatix wrote:
               | Subaddressing != aliasing.
        
               | mustaphah wrote:
               | Aliasing !== masked email
        
               | zamadatix wrote:
               | Agreed, there are also ways to employ aliases which won't
               | prevent spam, but this still doesn't explain the relation
               | to the subaddressing regex or why other ways or employing
               | aliases (e.g. masking) are never enough.
        
               | jp191919 wrote:
               | Using passmail aliases through protonmail has worked well
               | for me, that way my domain isn't exposed. And everything
               | forwards to one inbox.
        
             | andrewshadura wrote:
             | That's what I thought too until I moved to Fastmail. It
             | certainly isn't worse.
        
               | mustaphah wrote:
               | Fastmail is great. It's just that I'm not willing to pay
               | 5$ each month to send 5 emails from @mydomain.com. 1$ per
               | email is too much, right?
        
             | alextingle wrote:
             | Gmail is absolutely terrible for false positives. I'm sure
             | they do it deliberately to discourage people from using
             | other e-mail services.
        
               | mustaphah wrote:
               | What's your setup? If you're forwarding, an SPF-only
               | aligned email will fail DMARC, and it's the sender's
               | fault: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45441243
               | 
               | Next time a legit email ends up in your spam folder, use
               | this tool to figure out why:
               | https://mxtoolbox.com/EmailHeaders.aspx
               | 
               | I've had a few cases myself, and it's always been the
               | sender's fault.
        
               | tarboreus wrote:
               | Yes, they do. But you'll get 5 responses saying you're
               | doing something wrong.
        
             | tarboreus wrote:
             | This comment is from 1020.
        
               | LightBug1 wrote:
               | LOL. Thanks.
        
             | f4uCL9dNSnQm wrote:
             | It is at least 5 months since spammers use fake "delivery
             | error" to skip the filter: http://old.reddit.com/r/cybersec
             | urity/comments/1jzf6o2/fake_... . I would expect more from
             | industry-leading company.
             | 
             | Just joking, I expect nothing from GMail team after I
             | noticed that "block sender" option just puts emails in spam
             | folder instead of deleting them on arrival.
        
             | reaperducer wrote:
             | _I just can 't live without the Gmail spamfilter. It's just
             | the best. Industry-leading; no question._
             | 
             | I have accounts on Gmail and other services, and can say
             | from close to a decade of use that Fastmail's spam filter
             | is usually far better than Gmail's.
             | 
             | Occasionally it'll fall behind for a few weeks, but always
             | seems to catch up or surpass Google's.
             | 
             | Over the last couple of months, for example, 100% of the
             | spam I've received has come from Gmail. 0% from Fastmail.
        
         | blibble wrote:
         | doesn't work very well these days with SPF + DKIM
        
           | mustaphah wrote:
           | Only if the sender's DMARC setup is broken...
           | 
           | If their DMARC alignment relies on SPF only, it will break.
           | But if it relies on DKIM (far more common) or both SPF and
           | DKIM (best practice), forwarding won't cause any issues.
           | 
           | If your email breaks when forwarded, your setup is broken.
           | Tons of people use Cloudflare Email Routing or similar
           | services; you must account for them.
           | 
           | That being said, I forward mail addressed @mydomain.com to my
           | Gmail, and I've had a couple of cases where legit messages
           | landed in spam because it was SPF-aligned only.
        
       | herczegzsolt wrote:
       | This will be a major inconvenience for migrating mail accounts. I
       | used the POP feature a lot to get mails from one account to the
       | other without requiring a client to do the dirty work.
       | 
       | A migration is still possible, but needing to keep a client up
       | and running to push up mails via IMAP will be a major painpoint.
        
         | xp84 wrote:
         | This sounds like an opportunity for a cool open source project:
         | A container which checks a given POP account every few minutes,
         | and copies the message into an IMAP server of your choice.
        
           | cortesoft wrote:
           | Someone created that project 29 years ago... fetchmail
           | 
           | https://www.fetchmail.info/
        
             | xp84 wrote:
             | Am I expected to keep abreast of developments in the tech
             | world every three decades?? I've been busy.
        
         | NetMageSCW wrote:
         | Google has an email migration feature useful for one time
         | migration.
        
       | windows2020 wrote:
       | Back to the old Thunderbird days I guess.
        
         | fxtentacle wrote:
         | By now, it's new and quite neat :)
        
         | bcrl wrote:
         | Some of us are still using mutt!
        
       | jimrandomh wrote:
       | I can't tell whether I use this; the description in the article
       | sort-of matches a feature I use, but not exactly. The feature I
       | use is labelled "Check mail from other accounts" and appears in
       | the "Accounts and Import" tab in Gmail web; it causes Gmail to
       | periodically retrieve emails from an external server using POP,
       | and merge them into my main inbox. This article refers to the
       | option "Check mail from other accounts", which matches, but also
       | says "POP only works with a single device", which is false (wrt
       | this feature) and makes me think it may be talking about
       | something different.
       | 
       | I'm hearing about this for the first time from HN (not from
       | Google). I don't like having Google randomly drop IT tasks on my
       | plate, and the possibility that emails might just silently stop
       | being delivered is nighmarish. Sigh.
        
         | iLoveOncall wrote:
         | The top comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45440465
         | makes it clear that what you're referring to is exactly what is
         | being deprecated.
        
           | jimrandomh wrote:
           | No it doesn't make it clear, because it's written by a third
           | party reading the same internally-inconsistent page I am; any
           | information added beyond the Google documentation page is
           | conjecture.
        
             | znort_ wrote:
             | "Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-
             | party accounts through POP." seems quite clear.
        
               | mschuster91 wrote:
               | Good god Google can't be bothered to _not_ wreck shit
               | that doesn 't cost them much, eh?
               | 
               | Doesn't surprise me too much though, Gmail hasn't seen
               | much maintenance and polish over the last few years.
        
               | VladVladikoff wrote:
               | Personally I'm happy about it. It's the kick in the butt
               | I needed to get my last remaining crap off Google and
               | shut down my accounts for good.
        
               | suzzer99 wrote:
               | What does "from a third-party account" mean?
               | 
               | I have a test suite that accesses a gmail account through
               | POP. It's a regular gmail account. Will that be affected?
               | 
               | Edit: Okay I think not. But man is this confusing over
               | whether it's Gmail that's doing the fetching over POP (a
               | feature I had no idea existed) or somehting they're
               | calling a third-party account fetching Gmail emails over
               | POP.
        
         | sixhobbits wrote:
         | I use exactly this on my personal (free) and work (paid
         | workspace) accounts. I got an official notification from Google
         | that one member in my workspace (me) has used the feature in
         | the last 30 days and will be affected. I didn't (yet) get a
         | notification on my personal account.
         | 
         | I also rely pretty heavily on this feature for a few very low
         | traffic domains that I need but only have super set up on super
         | clunky web mail, so I guess I'm in the market for a new mail
         | client :(
        
           | pmontra wrote:
           | Maybe you can automatically forward mails from that domain to
           | Gmail and find a way to label them.
           | 
           | At worst you can write a mail client to do that by logging
           | in, listing mails, mailing them to you and keeping track of
           | what it already sent (sqlite?) They are very well known
           | protocols with plenty of implementations, so probably a LLM
           | can write the code with not much guidance.
        
             | HumanOstrich wrote:
             | Good luck getting consistent delivery to Gmail. Even
             | Cloudflare's email forwarding keeps getting blocked /
             | marked as spam.
        
               | vdqtp3 wrote:
               | Which is hilarious considering they can't seem to stop
               | obvious spam from hitting my inbox
        
               | NetMageSCW wrote:
               | I essentially have only forwarded email in my gmail from
               | my personal domain, and it has never been a problem for
               | me.
        
           | ahofmann wrote:
           | I switched from Google workspace to zoho.com Zoho is dirt
           | cheap and has great tools to import all my mail, contacts and
           | calendar data.
        
             | 486sx33 wrote:
             | We're Gsuite because it happened before I joined the org
             | and it's just too much of a pain to switch and get everyone
             | re trained off of google apps
             | 
             | Zoho has a lot of nice features and seems less evil. The
             | ticket tracking email system is a really nice feature
        
           | tempestn wrote:
           | You could just set them up to forward to gmail instead. Even
           | if you don't have a server to do this, you could use eg.
           | Cloudflare email forwarding.
        
           | andrewguru wrote:
           | I run Mailcast.io which you can use to forward email on your
           | domains to your personal Gmail account without setting up any
           | new email client
        
         | Navarr wrote:
         | I imagine the "POP only works with a single device" is in
         | reference to the Gmail App's support for POP
         | 
         | POP access of a different account on the web would be the
         | "Check mail from other accounts"
        
       | mobilene wrote:
       | Well _this_ is a pisser for sure. I've relied on POP3 email
       | transfer for years and years so that I have one mailbox to check:
       | Gmail.
        
         | leptons wrote:
         | I use Firebird and have it check my various Gmail accounts
         | using imap, as well as non-google email accounts. Everything in
         | one place.
        
           | tarboreus wrote:
           | For now.
        
         | geor9e wrote:
         | >one mailbox to check: Gmail.
         | 
         | I do this, but I guess I'm safe, since I did it via the setting
         | "Forward a copy of incoming mail to x and archive Gmail's copy"
         | or equivilent option for each provider.
        
         | pier25 wrote:
         | Same. What are the alternative you're looking at? Currently
         | looking at Zoho. Apparently Proton doesn't have third party POP
         | accounts.
        
       | zwieback wrote:
       | Learned from this post that Gmail web had POP! Now I'll be
       | mourning loss of a feature I never even used.
        
         | invalidusernam3 wrote:
         | I've been using it for many years, super simple way to have
         | many email addresses deliver to a single gmail. The effort I'll
         | spend migrating will be better spent setting up a non-Google
         | alternative
        
       | Dwedit wrote:
       | You can still use a third-party mail client to POP off the
       | server, then use IMAP to send it to Gmail.
        
         | NetMageSCW wrote:
         | That isn't very responsive or convenient...
        
       | Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
       | Oh damn.I need to migrate everything.
        
       | xp84 wrote:
       | Hypothesis: This feature is actually a very serviceable way for a
       | small business or individual to have a branded email address on
       | very cheap email hosting, while getting Gmail features for free.
       | Google wants such people to be paying for Google Workspace if
       | they don't want to be advertising the Gmail brand on their
       | address.
        
         | czechdeveloper wrote:
         | They did the same with free version of Google Workspace. It's
         | just no longer free.
        
           | xp84 wrote:
           | Exactly. To Google, wanting to use a domain other than Gmail
           | is a strong signal that they can probably shake you down for
           | a few bucks a month. Sure it's just $7 for most of these
           | people and they probably only have 1-2 accounts. But
           | multiplied by how many million people they saw using this
           | feature it could be worth it to Google. Plus also ending the
           | infra cost of fetching.
           | 
           | For those of us who were just using the feature to aggregate
           | mail from other email addresses like an old Yahoo account or
           | something, I doubt Google cares about it, they even probably
           | kind of liked it that you're viewing their ads instead of the
           | other guys, but they probably don't matter enough.
        
         | beejiu wrote:
         | Doesn't Google Workspace start at $7 per month? I can't see a
         | business user going to those lengths to save $1 or $2 per
         | month.
        
           | ocdtrekkie wrote:
           | I know businesses that use Gmail and have all their staff
           | make username.businessname@gmail.com addresses.
           | 
           | Do not bet against how much small businesses don't want to
           | pay for stuff, you will always lose.
        
             | cj wrote:
             | The bigger cost of Google Workspace is the administrative
             | overhead.
             | 
             | The admin panel for Google Workspace is extremely powerful.
             | Hundreds/thousands of settings. Great for medium/large
             | businesses with a dedicated IT person. A huge headache for
             | small businesses.
        
               | ocdtrekkie wrote:
               | I think a minimum of being able to shut down an account
               | when you fire someone and delete the data is worth having
               | manageability, but small businesses will do anything,
               | even additional staff administrative overhead, to avoid
               | paying a subscription.
        
               | Brian_K_White wrote:
               | You can't both realize that getting people to pay you
               | even a tiny but recurring subscription is how you get a
               | fat and easy life, and at the same time fail to realize
               | that paying anyone else even a tiny but recurring
               | subscription is how you give someone else a fat and easy
               | life at the expense of your own.
        
               | cj wrote:
               | The majority of small businesses aren't subscription
               | based services. I was assuming we were talking about
               | companies like your local coffee shop.
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | Same companies are also mortally offended by the very
               | idea of having to pay salaries and (gasp!) taxes; asking
               | them to also pay for tools feels like adding an insult to
               | injury!
        
               | londons_explore wrote:
               | I always find the admin panel hugely restrictive. It's
               | missing basic features like "just let me impersonate this
               | user now".
               | 
               | The number of times our support staff have to walk
               | someone through the process of doing something when the
               | ability to impersonate a user would just let them do it
               | far quicker.
        
               | metadat wrote:
               | > Nobody deserves even a modicum of privacy. Let's make
               | it 0 friction to inspect what they're doing at all times.
               | 
               | Features cut both ways. Am I respectful of my work
               | equipment? Yes. Would it be net good for my boss to
               | automatically get a report of everything on my screen
               | everyday, not particularly. So could we not have the
               | largest platforms make it even easier than it already is
               | to be creepy AF?
        
               | cwillu wrote:
               | Impersonation is not what you seem to think it is.
        
               | nerdsniper wrote:
               | Every system I design has this "impersonation" feature,
               | and none of them have any capability for surveilling
               | usage. It's just a way for me to see what my customers
               | are seeing. Helps me understand their problems, bugs in
               | my system, etc.
               | 
               | I have direct access to all the prod databases and lots
               | of tools for inspection/auditing. This isn't for that.
               | It's for helping people by seeing/using the system
               | through their eyes.
        
               | layman51 wrote:
               | It ideally doesn't need to be a privacy-invading thing,
               | but rather a way for administrators troubleshoot issues a
               | bit easier without having to get on a screensharing call.
               | I think maybe what makes it difficult is that Gmail might
               | be used as the key to authenticate into other accounts
               | (like for shadow IT).
               | 
               | And in the ideal case, even this action that a Google
               | Workspace administrator logged in as someone else would
               | be automatically written into an audit trail.
        
               | skeeter2020 wrote:
               | It's funny how many assume impersonation is all about
               | privacy, when it's really about empathy: letting you see
               | the situation through the eyes of the person you're
               | trying to help, instead of just responding I don't have
               | that problem in my setup or when using a god account.
        
           | jonathantf2 wrote:
           | I have had multiple people scream at me on the phone for
           | daring to suggest that a new person working needs their own
           | email account and it will cost about PS4 ($5.30~) a month
        
             | luckydata wrote:
             | you work for the wrong people
        
               | FirmwareBurner wrote:
               | If only life could be so easy that we could all avoid
               | working for the "wrong people".
        
             | schnable wrote:
             | Going from $0? That isn't surprising.
        
           | OhMeadhbh wrote:
           | Yeah... but Workspace has other problems. The only thing
           | Workspace gives you is a more direct way to pay Google until
           | they freeze your account.
        
           | pier25 wrote:
           | Per user/domain.
           | 
           | I'm retrieving POP emails from multiple domains. To migrate
           | to Google Workspace I'd need to pay like $40 per month... and
           | a couple of those inboxes rarely receive any emails.
        
         | tln wrote:
         | Very cheap email hosting still generally comes with IMAP I
         | think? Which gmail is still supporting. EG Namecheap $1/mo
         | email comes with IMAP.
        
           | cracki wrote:
           | How is google mail still supporting a "fetch" via IMAP of
           | mails stored in a third party service? What are the settings
           | to poke on mail.google.com for this?
           | 
           | The announcement clearly says that "Check mail from other
           | accounts" will disappear. They say it's about POP, but if the
           | entire feature disappears, then it's not just about POP.
        
             | entropie wrote:
             | Iam not sure about that - the wording is weird
             | 
             | > Starting January 2026, Gmail will no longer provide
             | support for the following:
             | 
             | > POP: Unlike IMAP connections, with POP, emails are
             | downloaded, and you decide how often you want to download
             | new emails.
        
         | sossles wrote:
         | I have an email forwarder on my personal domain that forwards
         | to my gmail address, and gmail lets me send email as if it were
         | coming from that address. Seems like it's the same result, and
         | they're not blocking that.
        
           | lmm wrote:
           | They've been gradually making it more difficult (you now have
           | to use a backdoor route with a machine access token if you
           | want to register a new sending address).
        
           | anty wrote:
           | Gmail quietly drops forwarded mails sometimes. They don't put
           | them into the spam directory, either.
        
         | pbreit wrote:
         | IMAP, which is MUCH better at doing the same thing, is still
         | supported.
        
           | DominikPeters wrote:
           | It is not supported. You can only add an IMAP mailbox on the
           | mobile app and not on gmail.com. The IMAP account is then
           | displayed as an inbox completely separate from your gmail
           | inbox. There is no pull and no integration.
        
             | pbreit wrote:
             | Ah, I see, I think you're right. I misread the Google doc.
        
         | yaur wrote:
         | POP has been a problematic protocol since 2000 or so.
        
           | xp84 wrote:
           | Perhaps for main email-management use, but it perfectly fits
           | the model of yanking a single stream of email from server A
           | to load into server B - without resorting to forwarding,
           | which is problematic because the middlemen don't want the
           | spam that gets forwarded to reflect poorly upon their IP
           | reputation.
        
         | yard2010 wrote:
         | I would happily pay to get something else than the enshitified
         | Gmail experience
        
         | pier25 wrote:
         | > _while getting Gmail features for free_
         | 
         | Maybe initially. But if you use Gmail for third party email
         | storage (which is what the POP feature is really about) after
         | some time you'll have to pay for Google One for more storage.
        
       | lxgr wrote:
       | What in the world was "Gmailify"? Was it different from adding
       | third-party accounts via POP? (Was it maybe just IMAP for third-
       | party accounts?)
        
         | NetMageSCW wrote:
         | I think it was adding third party accounts via POP but
         | automated for large well known third parties.
        
         | Tyr42 wrote:
         | It was IMAP sync between the Gmail server and the
         | Outlook/Yahoo/etc server.
         | 
         | Then you have a regular Gmail account and get notifications,
         | spam checking, mobile push notifications etc.
        
           | lxgr wrote:
           | Thank you! I never knew this was a thing.
           | 
           | So it was only available for a small list of services?
        
       | bound008 wrote:
       | I'm not one to defend google, but it seems that they are only
       | ending support for POP accounts, and retaining support for
       | IMAP/SMTP. Seems like a reasonable deprecation for 2025, although
       | they could have given more than a quarter to let people handle
       | the change.
        
         | bigwheels wrote:
         | But why do they need to remove the functionality? It's been
         | working fine for around 2 decades.
         | 
         | As a user of the feature, this is supremely annoying. They
         | didn't even send me a warning message it will be discontinued.
        
           | cyberax wrote:
           | Likely because one of the backend systems that implements
           | this functionality depends on some deprecated service. And
           | nobody cares enough to port the POP checker to use something
           | new.
        
           | warp wrote:
           | Google nowadays just seems afraid to store personal data.
           | Google have moved your maps history/timeline to be on-device
           | only, seemingly in response to geofence warrants. They're
           | also deprecating health (Google Fit) APIs, and moving that
           | data to be on-device.
           | 
           | So, removing POP (where they need to download emails to their
           | servers), and only supporting IMAP (where emails stay on the
           | third-party server) via their GMail app, that would be
           | consistent with a policy to store as little personal data as
           | possible. (it could also be completely unrelated :)
        
             | sumanep wrote:
             | IMAP was never supported and is still not supported for
             | external account un gmail web. And they don't remove pop.
             | You can use pop to access your gmail in any email client or
             | in the app if you wish.
        
         | DominikPeters wrote:
         | They have worded things dishonestly to make you think that POP
         | can be replaced by IMAP. The IMAP support is only available in
         | the mobile app (not gmail.com) and isn't a "fetch" that
         | integrates fetched emails to your Gmail inbox. It's kept as a
         | separate inbox.
        
         | NetMageSCW wrote:
         | That doesn't make sense if it is POP to third party accounts
         | because they've never supported IMAP to third party accounts.
        
         | sumanep wrote:
         | You didn't understand the article. You can use your gmail with
         | POP or IMAP. What you won't be able to do is to use POP (IMAP
         | was never an option) to download emails from external account
         | into your gmail account.
        
       | timbre1234 wrote:
       | Fetchmail ftw
        
       | MarkusWandel wrote:
       | Aaaah, OK. So connecting _to_ Gmail via POP is still going to
       | work. I use that with a (otherwise rarely used) Thunderbird
       | instance to keep a live backup of my mail. Because I 'm old
       | enough that I don't feel I "own" my data unless it's on a storage
       | device I own.
        
       | cracki wrote:
       | There are two "Gmail" things here: the actual service with a web
       | site (mail.google.com), and an android app on your phone that is
       | called "Gmail".
       | 
       | They are axing the "pull" path of the actual service. That path
       | only supported POP for pulling those mails. There never was an
       | IMAP pull path.
       | 
       | They are telling you to read your mails of the "other" account by
       | configuring your Gmail app to access it via IMAP. That obviously
       | won't import those mails from the other account into your Gmail
       | account.
       | 
       | The solution is to push. Configure whatever system handles the
       | "other" mail address to _forward_ the mails to your Gmail
       | account.
        
         | commandersaki wrote:
         | _The solution is to push. Configure whatever system handles the
         | "other" mail address to forward the mails to your Gmail
         | account._
         | 
         | Yep, I have 4 gmail addresses that I set to copy and forward to
         | my fastmail inbox, unless gmail kills that feature I am golden.
        
         | mikaraento wrote:
         | Heads-up to people trying this: Gmail will often put forwarded
         | email into spam. Be careful especially in the beginning to
         | check your spam folder. They may also reject the mail as spam,
         | esp if your volume is large.
         | 
         | IIUC it's hard to make forwarding to play nicely with DKIM and
         | spf. There's some disagreement on how to handle it. (I'm being
         | purposefully vague as I did interact with folks handling this
         | on the google side and don't want to cause them trouble for
         | helping me out).
        
           | enkrs wrote:
           | There are also rate limits on Google side for incoming mails.
           | By just forwarding four domains to my Gmail I used to hit
           | them quite often. Then 2 years ogo, I stopped forwarding and
           | switched to the now discontinued Gmail fetching domain mails
           | over POP...
        
         | sumanep wrote:
         | In the gmail app you can use both protocols POP or IMAP. The
         | article is about fetching external accounts in gmail web.
        
           | cpncrunch wrote:
           | The article isn't explicitly clear about whether or not POP
           | will continue working with the mobile apps or not though.
        
       | jaykru wrote:
       | RIP gomailify :( https://www.gomailify.com
        
         | ranger_danger wrote:
         | emailnator.com
        
       | metadat wrote:
       | I suppose the heyday is over, it's time to migrate to something
       | else. Oh, I won't be able to POP push gmail to my new email
       | address, nice.
       | 
       | There is an opportunity for someone to make a low-friction
       | service which does server-side forwarding via IMAP with decent
       | anti-spam. If done right, you could soak up a significant chunk
       | of the Internet email biz.
        
         | gazby wrote:
         | > I suppose the heyday is over, it's time to migrate to
         | something else. Oh, I won't be able to POP push gmail to my new
         | email address, nice. > > There is an opportunity for someone to
         | make a low-friction service which does server-side forwarding
         | via IMAP with decent anti-spam. If done right, you could soak
         | up a significant chunk of the Internet email biz.
        
         | NetMageSCW wrote:
         | POP doesn't do push, only pull, and it seems that gmail will
         | still support clients using POP.
         | 
         | There is no chance another email service will get any chunk of
         | Internet email if it has to charge for services.
        
       | devmor wrote:
       | Oh man there goes my access to my old college email from 14 years
       | ago that for some reason never got deactivated, just web login
       | restricted.
        
       | seydor wrote:
       | They are discontinuing fetching from POP server, but fetching
       | from IMAP is not supported either. So they are discontinuing
       | fetching altogether, right?
       | 
       | it won't even be available in the paid version, right?
       | 
       | why are they being confusing?
        
         | kumarharsh wrote:
         | IMAP is supported afaik:
         | https://support.google.com/mail/answer/78892?hl=en#zippy=
        
           | bonzini wrote:
           | That's fetching from Gmail via IMAP.
           | 
           | With IMAP there's no particular need for fetching from third
           | party accounts. The article itself says that IMAP is
           | supported in the app ("You can still read and send emails
           | from your other account within the Gmail app. This uses a
           | standard IMAP connection, which is supported in the Gmail
           | mobile app"). But indeed this removes altogether the
           | possibility to fetch from third-party accounts into Gmail.
        
       | suzzer99 wrote:
       | I finally figured out the confusion here. What a terribly worded
       | article. Could mean two different things:
       | 
       | 1) Some kind of third-party account (whatever that is) can no
       | longer check (fetch) emails from Gmail via POP. I have a test
       | suite that uses POP to fetch emails from Gmail, so this concerns
       | me.
       | 
       | 2) Gmail itself can no longer fetch emails from other email
       | accounts over POP (a feature I had no idea existed).
       | 
       | I guess it means #2. But it took me a long time to figure that
       | out. You'd think a $trillion company could word things better.
        
         | nl wrote:
         | "from third-party accounts" is a better worded version of your
         | (2).
         | 
         | Your (1) would be worded in the opposite order.
        
           | suzzer99 wrote:
           | The problem is unless you know what "third-party accounts"
           | means, it's ambiguous as to which account is being connected
           | to and which account is doing the connecting over POP. "Gmail
           | will no longer support checking emails from [thing I'm
           | unclear on] over POP."
           | 
           | The whole sentence hinges on knowing that Gmail itself can
           | (or could) become a client and go out to other email accounts
           | and fetch emails over POP. In my mind I'm wondering, "Are
           | they talking about something like where Slack connects to
           | gmail?"
        
         | makach wrote:
         | It's a shame. I use this functionality to retrieve and delete
         | messages from other mailboxes on a daily basis in order to use
         | Gmail as my primary email interface.
        
           | OhMeadhbh wrote:
           | Yeah. The interface isn't bad. Just remember to backup your
           | email somewhere.
        
           | suzzer99 wrote:
           | I do the opposite. I forward all my gmails to my primary
           | account.
        
         | manmal wrote:
         | I'm using this feature, and I've understood the article right
         | away. Yes it's #2, a little known but very useful feature that
         | I have no idea how I'll replace.
        
           | comboy wrote:
           | Does your other account not provide IMAP?
        
             | manmal wrote:
             | No
        
             | DarkmSparks wrote:
             | Its google that never supported fetching mails over imap,
             | not clear if they do now.
        
             | Strom wrote:
             | The other account may provide IMAP but it won't help you
             | because GMail only supports POP (which is now going away).
             | GMail does NOT support IMAP for 3rd party accounts.
             | 
             | The GMail mobile app does support IMAP, but that is
             | different from GMail as a service supporting it. The mobile
             | app having IMAP support does nothing for people who use a
             | web browser.
        
           | rhyswallace wrote:
           | Google Workspace handles this nicely (for $10/month...). I
           | used to use the to-be-deprecated feature but ran into some
           | occasional issues, so I bit the bullet to go to Workspace.
           | 
           | Feels overkill just to achieve the same outcome as we
           | previously had for free, though.
        
             | seydor wrote:
             | My understanding is it will be removed from both paid and
             | unpaid versions of Gmail, no?
        
             | ritzaco wrote:
             | I use it on my paid workspace account and personal, and I
             | got a notification on the paid workspace account that it
             | will be unavailable.
             | 
             | I guess it applies to the free account too but they just
             | don't bother to state it (yet).
        
           | tempestn wrote:
           | Set your other accounts to forward them to your gmail with
           | ARC headers, which gmail now supports. Used to be forwarding
           | into gmail was almost unusable due to spam false positives,
           | but I've found it to be significantly improved now (albeit
           | not perfect).
        
             | manmal wrote:
             | The other account (over which I have no administrative
             | control) does not support ARC. Yes I guess I'll just
             | forward emails.
        
               | latexr wrote:
               | Unrelated, but I noticed this in your two comments and it
               | seems to be something you do frequently--you're using the
               | wrong side of the quotation character as the apostrophe.
               | You're using ' but it should be '. See the difference:
               | I'll VS I'll.
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_single_quotation_mark
        
               | f_allwein wrote:
               | no, it should be ' (ASCII 39,
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe )
        
               | latexr wrote:
               | The page you linked to lists both ' and ', _in that
               | order_. There's no point in being (wrongly) pedantic
               | about either, both have strengths and weaknesses
               | (explained in the Wikipedia pages). The point is that if
               | someone cares to use proper typographic characters not
               | immediately visible in the keyboard (which the person I
               | replied to seems to), they probably care to use the right
               | ones. Both ' and  ' are correct, but ' is not.
        
               | hluska wrote:
               | It's interesting that you say there's no point in being
               | pedantic but this entire boring subthread started because
               | you were pedantic about punctuation. A character really
               | doesn't matter.
        
               | manmal wrote:
               | Yeah the German/English combined iOS keyboard is not
               | working well.
        
             | Vinnl wrote:
             | Hmm, I transitioned from Gmail to my own domain years ago,
             | but it's still Gmail. However, I'm still both receiving and
             | sending mail from my old @gmail.com address, using POP. Do
             | you know if that's still possible?
        
               | paffdragon wrote:
               | I also have an old Gmail account that I don't use
               | directly anymore. Instead of POP, I set it up to forward
               | everything to my mailbox.org account. It works for me
               | this way for several years now. The only issue is that I
               | don't get the spam forwarded, so you can't see if there
               | are false positives. You can still see it in Gmail if you
               | occasionally log in. For me, since this is a rarely used
               | account, the spam I get is usually indeed spam, so I
               | don't miss it. It might be different for a more active
               | account, though.
        
               | Vinnl wrote:
               | Cool thanks, I might set that up as well. And did you
               | just set it up as an alias so you can send email from it
               | as well?
               | 
               | (I don't actually know how often I send email from that
               | address, so maybe I don't even need that, but just in
               | case.)
        
             | saghm wrote:
             | I switched to doing this just last week (having been using
             | POP3 previously). It's honestly a lot nicer in IMO, since
             | the emails show up on the gmail side pretty much
             | immediately instead of sometimes being delayed.
        
           | crazygringo wrote:
           | I just had to check how I've set up my Gmail to collect all
           | my e-mail from other accounts.
           | 
           | Fortunately, they're all set up to forward to Gmail. Gmail
           | never checks them itself.
           | 
           | Does e-mail forwarding not work in your case?
        
             | manmal wrote:
             | It works but is prone to being marked as spam.
        
         | tambourine_man wrote:
         | Thank you. I still use POP to download and backup my emails.
         | Terribly worded article.
        
         | hollerith wrote:
         | I understood the title right away despite never having known
         | about the feature. (I knew about the standard way to use POP
         | with a gmail account.)
        
         | burnte wrote:
         | It's number 2. But IMAP still works.
        
         | pdntspa wrote:
         | I've been using (2) for probably 15+ years, combined with
         | tagging it has been great for consolidating multiple email
         | boxes into one feed.
         | 
         | That said you can get the same thing by setting up an auto-
         | forwarder to your gmail box.
        
         | ezconnect wrote:
         | #2 was frequently used as a spam filter for private domain
         | emails that don't want to deal with setting up spam filters on
         | their mail servers. I used this a decade or so ago in one of my
         | online store it was very good at spam filtering and you get to
         | use one webmail client to process all your emails from
         | different domains.
        
       | OhMeadhbh wrote:
       | Yeah. Gmail is an anti-pattern. I was paying $10/month for
       | workplace and a couple days ago they froze my account because I
       | was accessing it via IMAP. Fortunately, I own the domain so I
       | pointed it at amazon. I pretty much only use google apps to share
       | docs I've written elsewhere, so I didn't really lose too much
       | when I lost access to apps. It would be much cooler if there were
       | a human I could talk to to find out what we did to trigger the
       | account freeze. The only thing I can think of is I accessed my
       | gmail account from a location I don't normally access it from
       | (business trip) about a week after changing from SMS based 2FA to
       | authenticator based 2FA.
       | 
       | The cloud is someone else's computer. Sometimes they don't want
       | you on their computer, even if you're paying them to be there.
       | 
       | As a reminder, Google Takeout is your friend. We copy email off
       | of gmail via IMAP, mostly so we can have a local backup. I use
       | Takeout for my personal account. Had I thought google would
       | freeze a paid account, I would have used Takeout every week or so
       | to backup the few google apps docs I had up there.
        
         | planb wrote:
         | I'm paying for workplace too (ex-free account), can you share
         | more details on why it was frozen? Did they give an explanation
         | or do you just assume it was because you use IMAP? Do you never
         | login to your account on the web and just had it in your mail
         | client?
        
           | OhMeadhbh wrote:
           | no explanation. no response to emails so I have no idea what
           | we did.
        
             | samat wrote:
             | Did you try calling them?
        
         | taneq wrote:
         | Can I use POP3 to access Gmail? No. Ah okay, IMAP then? Also
         | no.
         | 
         | Edit: Ohhh. According to other posts it's about gmail not
         | pulling email from other servers via POP3, not about accessing
         | gmail.
        
         | ndr wrote:
         | Are you saying that accessing a gmail exclusively via IMAP
         | won't keep the account alive?
        
           | archb wrote:
           | It doesn't seem to be the free Google account either. The
           | fact it happened to a paid Google Workspace account is pretty
           | concerning.
        
           | OhMeadhbh wrote:
           | no, we also frequently accessed the webmail jnterface. or at
           | least I did.
        
             | internet2000 wrote:
             | > no, _we_ also frequently accessed the webmail jnterface
             | 
             | We? Did you share an account? That's way bigger a red flag
             | than using IMAP.
        
               | kwanbix wrote:
               | If he is using GWorkspace he is probably having more than
               | one user.
        
         | jsheard wrote:
         | > I was paying $10/month for workplace and a couple days ago
         | they froze my account because I was accessing it via IMAP.
         | 
         | I used to pay for Workspace and left because a good chunk of
         | features across all Google products simply didn't work with
         | Workspace accounts, or were held back for a year or more after
         | free Google accounts got them. It's a mess. Then they kept
         | increasing the price for good measure, and there's no off-ramp,
         | if you stop paying then the account is left in a zombie state
         | with _even less_ functionality than a free one until you start
         | paying again.
         | 
         | Do yourself a favour and use Fastmail or Proton or anything
         | else for your vanity domain instead.
        
           | Dennip wrote:
           | This is a super annoying quirk, lots of things don't work
           | well if you're using workspace as a normal gmail account, and
           | they don't quite warn you up front.
        
             | kevcampb wrote:
             | Google converted my mum's Gmail account to a workspace
             | account automatically. Now she can't use her bedroom alarm
             | clock because it's connected to my dad's Gmail account and
             | you can't share access to workspace accounts. It's stupidly
             | maddening.
             | 
             | And yes I realise that an IoT alarm clock is ridiculous,
             | but that's not the point.
        
               | bookofjoe wrote:
               | Off topic a bit: Facebook just converted my personal
               | account to a professional account. I have no idea why.
               | Although as I think about it for a moment, it might be
               | related to the fact that I visit/use Facebook less than
               | once a year....
        
               | mattzito wrote:
               | It was a proper Gmail account? Or was it an email@domain
               | account that maybe was using her work email address?
               | 
               | I'm asking because I used to work adjacent to this area,
               | and I know of only a few scenarios where an account
               | becomes a workspace account after being a consumer
               | account.
        
             | potatolicious wrote:
             | It's pretty much my #1 example of Google's propensity for
             | shipping its org chart.
             | 
             | Workspace accounts come with their own compliance
             | requirements and edge cases that products need to handle,
             | but rather than do that and provide a consistent user
             | experience most product teams don't answer to the relevant
             | PAs and so don't care, and Workspace accounts are a small
             | enough minority of users that nobody has to care.
             | 
             | I've often railed against a particular way of doing product
             | that's really common in our industry, but I suppose it's
             | been a while so I'll do it again:
             | 
             | We have a real problem with metrics-driven product
             | development, where we _exclusively_ care about the 95% use
             | case and actively disdain the 5% use cases.
             | 
             | On paper it makes sense - you direct your energies towards
             | the highest-payback activities. But the problem is that
             | _every_ user falls into _some_ 5% use cases, so a product
             | that is purely made up of 95% use cases ends up becoming a
             | patchwork that is frustrating to every user, somehow.
             | 
             | Rather than "product works great for 95% of users" you get
             | "100% of users cut themselves on some corner of the
             | product".
        
               | abustamam wrote:
               | What alternative to metrics-driven product development
               | would you suggest?
        
               | cardiffspaceman wrote:
               | It has been said, a typical MS Office user only uses x%
               | of the features of the software, but every one of those
               | millions of users uses a different x%
        
             | burnte wrote:
             | I had to admin Google Workspace maybe 9-10 years ago. It
             | was rough but I thought they'd beep refining it. I'm back
             | in a company using GW and I swear to god it's gotten worse.
             | The basic features that simple don't exist are boggling. It
             | is not a serious product and I feel bad for companies that
             | have to use it. I've been here three months and I'm already
             | planning our migration away.
        
             | jsheard wrote:
             | It's a completely avoidable situation too, there's nothing
             | stopping them from offering custom domains as a perk of
             | paid Google One plans for regular Google accounts.
             | Workspace is beyond overkill for individuals, you shouldn't
             | _need_ all that complexity just to attach a custom domain
             | to a personal Gmail account.
        
           | GCUMstlyHarmls wrote:
           | Is it possible to drop workspace, but keep the same account
           | running for your android account? Or still log in with the
           | same account (I guess downgraded to a non-paid account) for
           | sheets etc?
        
             | jsheard wrote:
             | IIRC you can still log into a lapsed Workspace account, but
             | the core "business" products like Gmail, Docs and Meet are
             | completely disabled until you reactivate your subscription.
             | The rest of Google still works to the extent that it ever
             | did under the weird Workspace limitations.
             | 
             | You cannot migrate a Workspace account into a regular
             | Google account, you're stuck with Workspace forever unless
             | you start over on a brand new account.
        
               | greycol wrote:
               | I honestly believe that last point is the reason people
               | still have their free grand-parented in workspace
               | accounts. Google went to close them down realized they
               | didn't have a graceful way to let people keep their paid
               | for apps and realized the engineering time to create a
               | workspace to consumer migration was worth much more than
               | any costs associated with those accounts.
        
           | Mistletoe wrote:
           | I tried Proton and my test emails couldn't even get through
           | that I sent myself. Kept going to spam instantly. The big
           | providers have us in a stranglehold here.
        
             | jsheard wrote:
             | Did you set up the SPF/DMARC/DKIM authentication records on
             | your domain? Those can make a huge difference to
             | deliverability.
        
               | Mistletoe wrote:
               | I don't have a domain. It was Proton emails going
               | straight to Gmail spam. I absurdly have even had similar
               | issues on fresh virgin iCloud email accounts going
               | straight to spam in Gmail.
        
             | esseph wrote:
             | If all your domain email DNS records (security) are
             | correctly set, you should be fine.
        
           | WillPostForFood wrote:
           | "a good chunk of features across all Google products simply
           | didn't work with Workspace accounts"
           | 
           | Hugely frustrating - they penalize their paying customers.
           | Can't attach Nest devices, can't use the YouTube family plan.
        
           | injidup wrote:
           | I have this annoying problem. When not plugged into my car I
           | can say
           | 
           | "Hey google remind me to call in sick tomorrow"
           | 
           | and it will put an entry into the calendar for me.
           | 
           | But if it is plugged into my car the same request will elicit
           | an
           | 
           | "I'm sorry please talk to your system administrator to get
           | this feature enabled"
           | 
           | This has gone on for years with google assistant and
           | workspace accounts. There is always some random interlock in
           | some byzantine permissions table that get's triggered at the
           | most inconvenient moment and you can't do what yesterday you
           | could do.
        
         | _el1s7 wrote:
         | > they froze my account because I was accessing it via IMAP
         | 
         | Stop being misleading, this is your assumption.
         | 
         | And while I agree that Google support generally sucks, you can
         | actually contact real humans as a workspace customer easily.
        
           | YetAnotherNick wrote:
           | I don't know why you are downvoted or the parent is upvoted.
           | Clearly the GP is not telling the details and it is highly
           | doubtful that they freeze the workspace account ever without
           | good reason. Unlike standard account, freezing worspace admin
           | account for this definitely means huge customer loss.
        
             | nemetroid wrote:
             | Not really if they only ever do it for small, personal
             | workspaces.
        
           | LightBug1 wrote:
           | Raises hand for another n=1 that I'm currently going through.
           | My point being, it doesn't matter than you can get hold of
           | someone because the bureaucracy is kafkaesque.
           | 
           | WTF has happened to Google?
           | 
           | We're a supplier being onboarded. We've been in on-boarding
           | hell for about 2 months now.
           | 
           | We've completed the job and are still being passed around
           | teams in order to get paid.
           | 
           | As an aside, one of the scourges of modern business is Ariba.
           | Google use Ariba along with many other large organisations
           | and it SUCKS.
           | 
           | It feels like using Ariba forces big companies to map their
           | bureaucracy around its structure rather than the other way
           | around ... which means people getting bounced from team to
           | team while different queries are raised and some random
           | person somewhere raises another query, etc etc ... and even
           | the internal staff struggle to make things happen.
           | 
           | Whatever happens, it feels like the bureaucratic structure
           | and use of Ariba has imprisoned staff at Google. They can't
           | get beyond their own system now.
           | 
           | The process was a real eye-opener as to what goes on when a
           | firm becomes huge.
           | 
           | In my experience, once a company implements Ariba, it's over
           | and they're just cash-cowing it.
           | 
           | The savings they make in automation are costs passed on to
           | the consumer or supplier in the hassle factor of getting
           | things done. I want to say "Never again", but that's not
           | entirely my choice.
           | 
           | /rant
        
             | da_chicken wrote:
             | > WTF has happened to Google?
             | 
             | They're a publicly traded company, so the shareholders are
             | the primary customer.
             | 
             | They're an advertising and data harvesting company with
             | significant investment in free-to-consumer services, so
             | users are viewed as products. That means user support looks
             | like overhead.
             | 
             | They're extremely large and extremely diverse, so losing
             | business is not a significant concern.
             | 
             | The problem is that they have too many incentives to not
             | care about you at all, even at the rates you're paying.
        
             | MaciejR wrote:
             | Off topic to the main point of this thread, but wanted to
             | help you out. If there's a PR submitted, tell your main
             | stakeholder to go into Ariba into the PR and have them
             | locate the approval flow with the corresponding approvers.
             | Then they can easily individually target the approvers to
             | accelerate your PO and get you paid.
        
             | SoftTalker wrote:
             | Most places I know of seem to use Microsoft 360 for "cloud
             | office productivity apps" vs. Google Workspace. The
             | exception being schools which tend to use Google (maybe
             | because they often buy cheap Chromebooks for the kids?).
             | 
             | IDK if Microsoft is better with onboarding or support but
             | I'd be inclined to assume that given their longer history
             | with Office and business customers.
        
               | fauigerzigerk wrote:
               | We (small tech company) migrated away from Microsoft 365
               | because it was extremely buggy and many supposedly simple
               | things are so incredibly complicated and convoluted.
               | 
               | They have several overlapping admin sites for absolutely
               | everything, plus some hidden old sites from the early
               | 2000s that support will guide you to use for some archaic
               | settings that still influence how more modern stuff
               | works.
               | 
               | In my experience, Microsoft support is good in the sense
               | that they are easy to contact and keen to help. But
               | working with them just took too much of my time. Their
               | approach is to schedule a call to guide you through
               | layers and layers of legacy stuff just to try things that
               | often end up not working.
               | 
               | With Google Workspace I don't actually know if support is
               | good or bad because we never needed support in the first
               | place. Google's software is far simpler and less buggy.
               | 
               | We also use Proton now, which has been working pretty
               | well so far. Better than expected.
               | 
               | Microsoft 365 is for companies that can afford to employ
               | a full-time, specialised Microsoft 365 admin.
        
             | schnable wrote:
             | I don't think anything happened regarding customer support.
             | Culturally, Google on the non-ads products was always "we
             | have a billion users, it's free, we're super smart and
             | invented SRE, so we don't care about support." Enterprise
             | tries harder but has that baggage.
        
             | immibis wrote:
             | They've always been like this.
             | 
             | If you don't get paid for a contract, either repossess the
             | work output, and/or file suit. That's the way to get paid
             | for a contract when someone doesn't pay you for a contract.
             | That's just how business is. A lot of businesses are out to
             | get ahead by any means necessary.
        
           | ossusermivami wrote:
           | I wonder why people come to conclusion like that to that
           | specific problem.
           | 
           | surely the user may knows that there is probably zillions (by
           | that i mean a lot) of users using gmail via IMAP (at least
           | the enterprise accounts) don't you think it's maybe something
           | else you are doing that flags your account
        
             | mrgoldenbrown wrote:
             | The main point is that a paying customer shouldn't have to
             | _guess_ at why they were flagged.
        
           | skeeter2020 wrote:
           | >> you can actually contact real humans as a workspace
           | customer easily.
           | 
           | This is only relative to the experience when you're a free
           | google account user. Compared to alternatives like Fastmail
           | contacting support - and actually getting a successful
           | resolution - is still very difficult. I finally switched our
           | org after many years when Google announced yet another price
           | increase (nominally for things I don't want or need) and I
           | really wish we'd gone sooner.
        
             | hackernewds wrote:
             | My anecdata counteracts your anecdata. Now how do we
             | resolve this?
        
               | isoprophlex wrote:
               | In the face of uncertainty I've found being wary of
               | faceless megacorps to be a pretty useful stance
        
               | delichon wrote:
               | Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing
               | was ever made.
        
             | ritzaco wrote:
             | yep I had an issue with an ownership change of a Google
             | Workspace account recently and to their credit it was
             | fairly easy (as a paying customer) to find a human to talk
             | to who could escalate to someone who could fix the issue.
             | It still was an annoying process that took a couple of
             | hours instead of a couple of minutes, but they certainly
             | didn't just ghost me or leave me out for dead.
        
           | recroad wrote:
           | Ha, no way man. I've been trying to get YouTube/Google to
           | reactivate my YouTube account for 14 years which has all my
           | daughters baby videos (then a 2 year old). They shut it down
           | due to some vague copyright violation which they still can't
           | explain to me, and haven't activated it despite about 20
           | support tickets being filed. And I'm a paying customer.
           | 
           | BTW, if anyone works for Google here and can help me to get
           | it back I'll pay you $100.
        
             | Workaccount2 wrote:
             | You probably have a better chance if you put contact info
             | in your profile
        
           | Moto7451 wrote:
           | >> you can actually contact real humans as a workspace
           | customer easily.
           | 
           | I can barely get replies from my Google Cloud rep and we're
           | paying them a lot more than $10 per month. Having reps on
           | staff doesn't mean they have time until things are escalated.
           | When Google threw captchas up on Workspace accounts with
           | integrations (which our product is) for 20ish minutes on
           | Friday and everything was a panic we got responses from a few
           | reps all at once, but mostly to hand wave away the outage.
           | 
           | If you want a fun example there's a LegalEagle video where he
           | details the difficulty in getting imposter accounts taken
           | down from YouTube through his contacts. He's not just a
           | random YouTube user, he makes them money.
           | 
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEA0JzhpzPU&vl=en
           | 
           | And for what it's worth, these experiences are what I have
           | come to expect from everyone outside of the high tiers of AWS
           | Premium Support and a couple other vendors where you pay what
           | is essentially a timeshare agreement for a support team.
        
         | e40 wrote:
         | As a paying customer you had the ability to get a human on the
         | line. Whether or not they would tell you why the account was
         | closed is another matter.
        
           | Workaccount2 wrote:
           | I imagine their support is like UPS/Fedex, where they do
           | everything possible to get you to hang-up, make you sit and
           | wait between harrowing phone menus, all so that you can get a
           | person in India who only can see the same tracking website
           | that you see.
        
         | grapesodaaaaa wrote:
         | I've had this happen to numerous friends.
         | 
         | Haven't you heard? The best way to contact gmail support is by
         | posting about it on tech websites /s
         | 
         | It's sad that I often see resolutions happen here after an
         | engineer scrolls through the comments. I agree that not having
         | backups and your own domain is asking for trouble the way
         | things are currently structured with online mail.
         | 
         | I will say that I hosted my own servers for years, but it's a
         | lot of trouble and not for everyone (plus, I could never quite
         | get the spam filtering tweaked how I wanted).
        
         | citizenpaul wrote:
         | Google is absolutely notorious for freezing accounts with zero
         | warning, zero explanation and zero recourse.
         | 
         | I personally experienced this while working for a charity that
         | used Google workspace. After 8 years they suddenly froze the
         | account. The freeze lasted 32 days. During this period they
         | could not operate and Google was completely unresponsive for
         | the first 2 weeks. Google then started demanding various forms
         | of proof of incorporation, various employee government ID's,
         | things like that. We provided all this information. After
         | another week of silence they started asking for ID's of people
         | that did not even work there. We told them we could not provide
         | this information, because of that. Silence. Finally at week 4
         | we got a call from someone in India that told us there was
         | nothing they could do and the response team would continue to
         | investigate. We are not allowed any contact with the
         | investigation team. Then 32 days after being locked out,the
         | account was silently unlocked again with no explanation.
         | 
         | I cannot discourage people from using any google product for
         | their business any more strongly than this story. They are a
         | terrible company and do not care at all about their customers.
         | They are too big to fail so they just stomp all over you.
         | 
         | Remember google has no way to contact them other than an email
         | form. Which we filled out 2-5 per DAY, which went mostly un-
         | responded to. In the painfully rare case that you do get
         | someone one the phone they will just be someone in India that
         | tells you sorry, nothing we can do.
        
           | qiine wrote:
           | crazy stuff, looks like youtube is the same
        
           | kilroy123 wrote:
           | I set a reminder on my calendar to do a take out every 3
           | months and keep my data backed up and refreshed.
        
           | Naomarik wrote:
           | I was about a week from launching a react native app on
           | iOS/Android, so decided to go through all the administrative
           | motions to get things going in case there were any delays in
           | getting that moving.
           | 
           | Google Developer account cost me $25. A few days go by and I
           | get an e-mail asking for identification documents and a bill
           | that shows that I live at the place I'm at. I send my
           | passport and utility bill with my name on it, those get
           | rejected with absolutely 0 reason the next day.
           | 
           | Zero explanation. I raised about 8 different support tickets
           | and DMed several people on twitter and linkedin that worked
           | for google and emailed a few higher up people.
           | 
           | At one point I got some communication from a completely
           | different department that wasn't accessible to the support
           | lines publicly available, and it looked like they were going
           | to help me.
           | 
           | But in the end nothing.
           | 
           | This was a copy/paste response I saw for every support
           | ticket:
           | 
           | Thanks for contacting the Google Play team.
           | 
           | As much as I'd like to help, I'm not able to provide any more
           | information. Unfortunately, we are unable to verify the
           | documents you provided and are unable to grant your appeal.
           | 
           | If you are located in the EU, you may have additional redress
           | options. Learn more about those potential options in the EU
           | Out-of-Court Dispute Resolution Help Center. Routing ID: ZLFS
           | 
           | Thanks again for your understanding.
           | 
           | My final response after a week of relentless effort:
           | 
           | I'll concede in understanding that:
           | 
           | No one has actually looked at my documents
           | 
           | No one wants to give me a reason why you won't help me
           | 
           | No one on your entire support team is capable of performing
           | basic customer support tasks.
           | 
           | Thanks for treating me like some untouchable beggar when you
           | were the ones that stole $25 from me.
           | 
           | Apple/iOS cost me $100 and my developer account was verified
           | within two days with zero hassle.
        
       | PeterStuer wrote:
       | One more step to bring email in line with being messages on a
       | website rather than messages on your computer.
        
       | heavyset_go wrote:
       | RIP to my OG Gmail account that I forgot the password to but
       | still have POP access to via the Gmail web client.
        
         | breakingcups wrote:
         | Wonder if it's possible to change the POP server without
         | changing the credentials... You could set up your own sniffer
         | server to retrieve the password that Gmail sends to you.
        
           | shagrath wrote:
           | I'm in the same boat, and unfortunately, no
        
       | mijoharas wrote:
       | Somewhat related. What do people use to keep an offline backup of
       | Gmail, and other mail accounts? Do you need to keep a full
       | download of your mailbox, or is there some way to get an
       | incremental dump (i.e. just things that changed since X)
        
         | rendx wrote:
         | I use imapsync. Yes you can limit it to mails sent or received
         | in a certain timespan.
         | 
         | https://imapsync.lamiral.info/FAQ.d/FAQ.Archiving.txt
        
           | mijoharas wrote:
           | Hey, first off, thanks.
           | 
           | How do you go about that? The documentation says:
           | 
           | Q. Can imapsync be used to maintain and restore a local
           | offline copy of a mailbox, eg for backup purposes, using Mbox
           | or Maildir format, so that if the server fails, then the
           | mailbox could be reinstated?
           | 
           | R1. No. Imapsync plays with IMAP servers only.
        
           | password4321 wrote:
           | I'm guessing imapsync could be used to transfer email into
           | Gmail to replace this POP client feature that is being
           | removed, as long as it can sync into a folder.
        
         | krageon wrote:
         | https://isync.sourceforge.io/mbsync.html
         | 
         | It's the most performant solution that's also mature. I've used
         | it for years to retrieve all of my email accounts (of which
         | gmail is one) to a folder that I also backup.
        
           | mijoharas wrote:
           | Is there any way to only get a subset of the mail (i.e. only
           | changes in last week).
           | 
           | I don't think I want all my email on my local machine, but I
           | do think I want it all in the backups.
           | 
           | I couldn't see anything digging in.
        
         | jamespo wrote:
         | Docker image of gmvault which still works for me even though
         | the project is basically abandoned:
         | https://hub.docker.com/r/aubertg/gmvault-docker/
        
         | paffdragon wrote:
         | On one machine I have offlineimap.py[1] (with mutt), on the
         | other laptop Evolution[2] that archives my mail locally that I
         | can also export and back up regularly.
         | 
         | [1]: https://www.offlineimap.org/
         | 
         | [2]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evolution/-/wikis/home
        
           | mijoharas wrote:
           | Ok, interesting. I checked the docs of offlineimap (thanks, I
           | hadn't found that one when googling!) and it looks like I
           | could use the `maxage` option for the incremental option (I
           | think I want to create a folder for each week, back it up ,
           | and delete it after a while).
           | 
           | Do you have anything set up with evolution to handle things
           | automatically?
        
         | carlosjobim wrote:
         | An e-mail client? At least that's how I do it, and it's been
         | working well for decades.
        
           | mijoharas wrote:
           | My problem is I don't want to keep my entire email
           | downloaded, but to periodically back things up.
           | 
           | Do you use your email client to periodically backup? (I would
           | like it automated).
           | 
           | Do you use thunderbird or something else if so?
        
             | carlosjobim wrote:
             | E-Mails don't take up that much space for it to be any
             | issue to me. Every five years or so I clean out some of the
             | old ones and leave them only in backups.
        
       | srb24 wrote:
       | POP is not perfect (could a new version be created - POP4??) but
       | IMAP is not always the solution. For one thing it makes switching
       | mail provider very hard when you haven't got a copy of all your
       | historic emails - with POP you just change settings and away you
       | go. Ms are also always trying to turn off POP access for the
       | Office Outlook program. Hmmmmmm It's almost as if both they and
       | Google run two of the largest subscription email hosting
       | platforms which would both benefit if it's harder for people to
       | change provider... Of course the less you download the more you
       | have to store on their servers and the more you store the more
       | you pay and of course every day brings more emails to store....
        
         | yreg wrote:
         | This is about uploading data to gmail. You continue to be able
         | to download from gmail via pop3.
        
       | randomtoast wrote:
       | Gmail's endgame plan is that virtually everyone in the world is
       | forced to use Gmail or have a very reduced email experience.
        
         | vladms wrote:
         | Good luck with that. I changed to a different provider like 10
         | months ago and to be honest I do not see big differences.
         | 
         | It was a problem with a couple of other sites that don't allow
         | you to change your user/email, but we can't blame that on
         | Gmail.
        
       | Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
       | Well, I'm that Gmail user who used POP3 fetching from my previous
       | email from day 1 of using Gmail. I guess I'll have to set up IMAP
       | then, at least until the time they'll take it away, too.
        
         | NetMageSCW wrote:
         | I would replace POP with forwarding unless you are okay with
         | storing your email in multiple services.
        
       | xdanger wrote:
       | Oh no, I have to go and setup my family's emails again. We have a
       | domain and I used to forward to some gmail accounts (few don't
       | want to use multiple email programs/accounts), but so much mail
       | got lost (not even in spam folder) that I just had to switch
       | everyone to pop3 fetch to gmail.com. Now at least email get's
       | there, even if it's 30-60mins late (really annoying for
       | logins/verifications/etc.).
       | 
       | Maybe it's time to switch everyone out of gmail and make gmail
       | forward the email to out hosted accounts.
        
         | ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
         | Migadu.
        
           | lagniappe wrote:
           | Migadu.
        
       | noirscape wrote:
       | They're almost certainly doing this to put the screws on Gmail
       | users. Data export compat isn't great with Gmail to begin with,
       | but at least with a vanity domain you could have the option to
       | use that instead and if Google went bad, you could still use it
       | directly without having to reconfigure a lot of stuff. (Since
       | this feature is meant to integrate with shared hosting providers
       | that offer an email service "for free".)
       | 
       | Axing this feature (title is slightly misleading - you can't do
       | the same thing over IMAP with the Gmail service; external mail
       | fetch is dead) is an attempt to get people to stop using vanity
       | domains so they're locked in/tied to the Gmail ecosystem.
       | 
       | Pretty awful and I wonder how wise of a business decision this
       | is, given Google is one of the companies who's getting side-eyed
       | in Europe due to being an American big tech company with ties to
       | the US government. Wouldn't be surprised if a good number of
       | people will just abandon the big G's mail service as a result.
       | Regular people (so not tech people) are more aware about this
       | sort of thing than they were before, and Gmail specifically has
       | been getting the stinkeye because of how obvious it is. This will
       | only end up confirming those fears.
        
         | NetMageSCW wrote:
         | Forwarding works fine and has been how I've always used gmail.
        
           | sumanep wrote:
           | Yahoo doesn't allow forwarding anymore
        
         | sumanep wrote:
         | You can't do the same thing with imap.
        
       | CTOSian wrote:
       | I am using the gmail web-app to access emails from eg yahoo and
       | outlook, well if they pull off the plug of this feature (gmail
       | mobile app only) no big deal - sod off gmail (web app again)
       | there is zoho that you can do this with a very small cost (abt
       | PS1/mo IIRC)
        
       | cess11 wrote:
       | I think most readers here could afford a domain name and email
       | accounts with some local or otherwise small provider, that's a
       | much better option.
        
         | NetMageSCW wrote:
         | That's a terrible idea - putting your email at risk with a
         | small local provider is asking for future trouble.
        
       | anty wrote:
       | Is there any solution that does not require me to run my own
       | email server?
       | 
       | I have a 2GB email server. I use POP to regularly import the
       | mails into Gmail. This deletes the mails on my limited-storage-
       | server.
       | 
       | I already pay for Google storage. I do not want to pay (more) for
       | another email server just so I can keep all my emails forever.
       | 
       | Forwarding mails does not work, because Gmail quietly drops
       | mails. They don't even put them into the spam folder.
       | 
       | My webhoster told me I could pay for Google Workspace. There you
       | apparently can use your own domain. But then I have a third
       | service I have to pay.
        
         | Jolter wrote:
         | Did you rule out using IMAP?
        
           | anty wrote:
           | With IMAP i need to run a mail server that stores my mails
           | forever, right? I want to "import" a copy into Gmail and
           | delete it on the original server.
        
         | NetMageSCW wrote:
         | Forwarding is the right solution, but it needs to be at a lower
         | level than a regular user style email forward - more like a DNS
         | delivery change.
        
       | noduerme wrote:
       | FUCK THIS. This is disgusting.
       | 
       | I've been using Thunderbird for 10 years as the way I normally
       | download my gmail. I have no interest in using IMAP, I store
       | everything locally.
       | 
       | I suppose the idea is that they can make more money if you don't
       | delete after you download your mail, then you have to pay them
       | for storage?! Is that what this is about??
       | 
       | Because there have to be a small handful of people in the world
       | still using POP to access gmail. Feels fucking personal.
        
         | StopDisinfo910 wrote:
         | The article is about Gmail checking third party account through
         | POP and not about checking Gmail using POP which remains
         | supported.
        
           | noduerme wrote:
           | Ah. Thanks. Since I don't have any kind of multiple account
           | setup with Gmail, it really wasn't clear on a first read of
           | the article that it wouldn't apply to all POP access. Sigh of
           | relief...? Sirens going off? I run my own mail server, but I
           | use gmail as a backstop - i.e. if a hosting provider needed
           | to verify me, _that_ would go to my gmail account. I should
           | probably radically reconsider that now before it 's too late,
           | because I really don't like the way this is trending.
        
           | NetMageSCW wrote:
           | I hope so but the article is incredibly unclear about that
           | since it suggest an alternative is to configure IMAP on your
           | third party account as an option.
        
         | hackernewds wrote:
         | Bit of an overreaction since your use case isn't being affected
         | at all. Rather they are making no money off it, and continue to
         | support it.
        
           | noduerme wrote:
           | That was not very clear from the article, but yeah.
           | Understood. I don't even know wtf "third party accounts" are.
           | Nowhere does it say that they will continue to support :995
           | access. They should mention that somewhere.
        
         | Hnrobert42 wrote:
         | This seems to affect only checking 3rd party email addresses
         | using POP. I think you can still use TB with POP to get your
         | mail that goes straight to Gmail.
        
       | sylware wrote:
       | And a few months ago, they did, literaly, block noscript/basic
       | (x)html browsers for their dominant search engine (right before
       | that they were white-listing a few of those browsers).
       | 
       | Gogol has been on the super evil guys side for a while. The US
       | admin has been trying to "anti-trust" them for years, without any
       | results to make them behave: because its need to have a technical
       | part. With enforced, minimal, simple and good enough to do the
       | job technical protocols/file formats. Usually, a small subset of
       | what it is already running IRL would be defined as those
       | protocols/file formats. For the web, that would be noscript/basic
       | (x)html (remember when most of the web was running perfectly fine
       | with basic html forms?)
       | 
       | All that to allow alternative small implementations to be real-
       | life alternatives.
       | 
       | I could buy on amazon with lynx browser hardly a few years back,
       | now I cannot (well I have not tried in a while), the agenda of
       | the devil is followed perfectly.
        
       | anentropic wrote:
       | That sinking feeling...
       | 
       | I have no idea if I'm using this. I set something up like 20
       | years ago when migrating from a self-hosted email to Gmail. But I
       | think maybe at least one of my addresses might still be a POP
       | mailbox.
        
         | chanux wrote:
         | They would surely send an e-mail with the specifics if you are
         | affected, right?
        
       | bborud wrote:
       | I have a Google Workspace for my family. Mostly for email. Has
       | anyone had a similar setup and moved in to Protonmail?
        
       | shauntest12321 wrote:
       | Forward Email for me.
        
       | paride5745 wrote:
       | I already started to move most of my communications to
       | ProtonMail. Looks like Google wants to force people to use the
       | WebUI instead of email clients (no google ads on IMAP/POP).
       | 
       | What's annoying is that they are impacting paying customers as
       | well, which is quite bad.
        
         | kelvinjps10 wrote:
         | But Proton doesn't offer good third-party access either;
         | actually, Gmail is better
        
         | ianhawes wrote:
         | I suspect this has much more to do with bad actors using
         | automated means to access Gmail and send spam.
        
           | NetMageSCW wrote:
           | How does gmail using POP to retrieve messages to your account
           | from your account with another service facilitate spam and
           | how can the bad actor take advantage of that?
        
           | sumanep wrote:
           | That does not make sense
        
         | newscracker wrote:
         | Last I checked, Proton Mail does not support standard email
         | client protocols. So you're stuck with its apps and a browser
         | interface or with buying a paid subscription and using a bridge
         | software on desktop to use a client like Thunderbird. Getting
         | mails out of Proton Mail is also not as easy as setting up a
         | client with IMAP or using other tools like imapsync.
        
           | paride5745 wrote:
           | The point is that Google is harming paying customers, and as
           | a paying customer Proton respects me more and it is based in
           | Europe, which is a big plus for me.
        
             | ndiddy wrote:
             | > Looks like Google wants to force people to use the WebUI
             | instead of email clients (no google ads on IMAP/POP).
             | 
             | I think that's a valid criticism, but Protonmail also
             | doesn't allow people to use a standard email client. I
             | agree with the parent commenter that it's strange that
             | you're suggesting it as an alternative, especially when
             | there's services like Fastmail and Purelymail that both
             | have accessible human support and let you use a standard
             | email client.
        
               | fullstop wrote:
               | I switched from Proton -> Fastmail and have been happy
               | with the transition.
               | 
               | You get more "stuff" from a ProtonMail subscription, but
               | I really just want email.
        
         | deadbabe wrote:
         | Why not just use Gmail api?
        
         | matheusmoreira wrote:
         | I'm having a really good experience with Proton. I even
         | interacted with them here on HN once, they cleared up some
         | uncertainties by posting technical OpenPGP information that
         | wasn't covered in their documentation.
        
       | daitangio wrote:
       | I set up my personal mail server https://github.com/docker-
       | mailserver/docker-mailserver and I have wrote about it here
       | https://gioorgi.com/2020/mail-server-on-docker
       | 
       | I am GMail-free from 2020 and I am a lot happier.
       | 
       | I keep my GMail account, but I use just as failsafe or as
       | seconday account. In the meantime, I have very little trouble
       | managing my mail-server.
        
         | ddtaylor wrote:
         | Wow this is awesome!
        
       | enigma101 wrote:
       | that's a bit rich from google to not support the essential
       | protocol of email
        
         | NetMageSCW wrote:
         | Are there other email services that support scheduled POP
         | transfer of email from other accounts?
        
       | michaelbryzek wrote:
       | Thanks for mentioning Google Takeout - was not aware of that
       | service and found it very useful
        
       | schnable wrote:
       | It's amusing to me that big friendly Google that started out
       | giving massive amounts of storage away for free (effectively
       | unlimited at the time) has been on a kick to roll that back.
        
         | bunderbunder wrote:
         | Their advertising used to be so wildly profitable that they
         | just straight-up had money to burn. That business model has
         | been getting less and less sustainable as their advertising
         | profits continue to erode.
        
       | matheusmoreira wrote:
       | Stop using gmail. I bought a Proton Mail subscription. Truly one
       | of the best things I've ever done.
        
         | mcpar-land wrote:
         | especially if you have a custom domain with google workspace
         | (or whatever it's named now). my switch to pointing my domain
         | from google to proton was totally painless, you can migrate all
         | your old emails, etc.
         | 
         | i imagine if you just have an @gmail.com it might be a little
         | more annoying what with having to do forwarding, but still
         | worth it.
        
         | ImJamal wrote:
         | Proton doesn't support pop either?
        
           | matheusmoreira wrote:
           | I didn't need it. Alternatives like fastmail should be good
           | in that case.
        
       | pier25 wrote:
       | Well fuck. I've been using this feature since I started using
       | Gmail in 2007 or so.
        
         | DamnInteresting wrote:
         | I'm in the same boat, watching Google preparing to capsize it.
         | I'm a paying customer, and they keep making my life more
         | difficult.
        
       | nla wrote:
       | The Google enshitification continues unabated.
        
       | neves wrote:
       | Everytime someone tells me about the advantages of
       | decentralization, I ask them to explain me why e-mail, the
       | decentralization protocol per excellence, now is centralized in a
       | handful of companies.
        
       | chrisfinazzo wrote:
       | Why are people surprised by this? (No, really)
       | 
       | IMAP "defeated" POP _long_ ago if you wanted to use a third-party
       | client but still access mail from anywhere.
       | 
       | By definition, this doesn't work in a POP environment, but that's
       | increasingly an outdated mindset.
       | 
       | For historical reasons (intertia, and being early enough that I
       | was able to acquire a "firstname.lastname" address), I don't plan
       | to leave Gmail unless things really go south. My personal domain
       | (Fastmail) is used for other things and I've never anything other
       | than Mail.app and their own web interface.
        
       | mlhpdx wrote:
       | I'm so glad I bit the bullet and wrote my own email service.
        
       | arbuge wrote:
       | Lots of comments here suggesting forwarding emails from the
       | external account to Gmail as a workaround for this.
       | 
       | This isn't a complete workaround though. In particular, the
       | option to delete the email from your server after retrieving it
       | will not be replaceable. At least cPanel doesn't seem to offer
       | the option to delete automatically after forwarding, and you
       | could argue it shouldn't - with a push, you never know if the
       | other end actually got it, unlike with a pull.
        
       | wiseleo wrote:
       | I've been using this feature (POP3 fetch from external accounts,
       | send as external accounts) for over 10 years. It's unfortunate
       | that it will break soon. :(
        
       | wkat4242 wrote:
       | Funny, at the same time Microsoft is making it mandatory to do
       | just that if you want to use outlook with another provider.
        
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