Gmail Adds POP3 To Email Accounts 527
VaultX writes "Gmail has recently added POP3 services to their free email accounts. This would allow someone to use gmail without ever seeing any of their advertisements. They are also providing SMTP, both POP3 and SMTP are forcing the use of SSL/TLS. Very interesting...now where's IMAP and what's the catch?" It's being phased in, though, so not every gmail account yet has POP access.
The catch is.. (Score:5, Interesting)
My guess is that they'll inject adverts in to your e-mail when you download it using pop. The move wouldn't make sense otherwise.
Simon.
Re:The catch is.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Frankly I like your suggestion better.
Re:The catch is.. (Score:5, Interesting)
A few years ago, I signed up with a company that advertised "free e-mail for life" and it included POP3 access. After a short time, only web-based access was free and POP3 required you to pay. I think that's exactly where Google is headed.
Re:The catch is.. (Score:3, Funny)
Well, you got free email for the life of USA.net...
Re:The catch is.. (Score:5, Interesting)
They take their business pretty seriously and their service is great. I have used one e-mail as my primary e-mail address for the last eight, going on nine years. Thats quite crazy to think about. That being said I am switching to my own private e-mail addy when my subscription runs out, or I may renew for one more year to make sure people don't lose track of me. Its been a good run with usa.net and I wish them the best.
JOhn
lifetime email? (Score:5, Interesting)
1. I cant use the email my ISP provides beacause once I leave them its over.
2. One of the unfortunate side-effects of the web is that everyone uses email addresses for verification. At this point a migration away from hotmail to gmail (or whoever) is a serious work-load and would cause all sorts of problems.
3. I get pop access through the Hot Popper program.
So, what are some alternatives? Maybe there can be a publically funded email service for "identification purposes," but I really dont want to depend on the whim of congress for funding. PBS/NPR get treated like shit, and I would expect them to do the same to "socialized" email.
Maybe we really a geek backed, volunteer email service running as a non-profit. For a nominal fee (or even free) you can have an email address for life. This can be given to the public trust like how ICANN (not the best example) run the internet/domain names.
If gmail does offer pop3, Id like to get off hotmail, but both solutions means if these companies go bankrupt or change their policies in some way that affects me negatively then I'm screwed.
Also, very few of these email outlets even defend freedom of speech. I believe I'm more protected than most because Im a paying hotmail customer, but if I were to reply to a spammer or someone I'm angry at with "fuck you," then I might be subject to account termination. That's not right.
Or perhaps this could be solved with a better TOS/Contract. An email provider who puts aside x amount of money in a savings account to defend a "if we go bankrupt we will run for 6 months as you migrate" policy will get my money, and probably lots of others.
Re:lifetime email? (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Pay $5-$15/year (depending on which registar you choose) for www.yourname.com.
2. Pay $5-$20/month (depending on which host you choose) for web-hosting. If you only want email, I'd imagine you'd be looking at the $5 end of the spectrum.
You now have unlimited POP3 accounts, your choice of webmail applications, at least 500 megs of space on even the cheapest of hosts, a clean email address (no more your_name9387943894793@hotmail.com) and it's yours for life unless you stop paying the bills. If the host or registar changes their policies to something you disagree with or if they go out of business, it takes 24 hours at the most to transfer it to another company.
Re:lifetime email? (Score:3, Interesting)
Correction... (Score:4, Insightful)
Older accounts and paid accounts still have all the access they want.
Try making a new hotmail address and set it up for http access in OE or OL. Doesn't work
Re:The catch is.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I like his suggestion better, too. However, everybody seems to forget the Gmail is still in BETA. This is BETA software and they are testing BETA features. These features don't have to be available when Gmail comes out of BETA and they most certainly don't have to be free.
Noticed how I emphasized the BETA and the BETA, for what I hope are obvious reasons.
Re:The catch is.. (Score:5, Funny)
I think you missed a BETA there.
Re:The catch is.. (Score:4, Insightful)
'beta' itself meaning pretty much nothing, could be 0.9 or whatever too. it's out there, marketed with the seemingly limiteless supply of invitations to the service(you can't come - but everyone gets in).
and how is everyone forgetting that is beta? the questions would still be relevant. a released product is a released product, no matter what you call it or if you paint it yellow and put a huge sign on it saying "THESE ARE NOT THE FINAL FEATURES". no shit they're not the final features? it's going to be an evolving product through it's lifecycle probably anyways so not even the features it has when they remove the beta label will be "final".
so far what they got is a product.. and trying to figure out what to do with it.
Re:The catch is.. (Score:5, Funny)
mushroom mushroom?
Re:The catch is.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The catch is.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Google's approach is much more in line with the Debian policy than Microsoft's.
Re:The catch is.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, I completely forgot that Gmail had ads, until someone i was showing it to pointed out that you have to look at the ads all the time.
I guess years of manually sifting usenet as fast as my mouse wheel can scroll has made my eyes impervious to spam and ads.
Re:The catch is.. (Score:5, Funny)
NICE SIG!
Re:The catch is.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The catch is.. (Score:5, Informative)
"Access: Free automatic forwarding. POP3 access is not yet available, but will be in the future for free or at a nominal fee."
In other words, once they go live I would expect pop3 access to either be a paid service, or have injected google text ads.
Re:The catch is.. (Score:3, Informative)
Forwarding (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought they'd do just that too, but I currently use the Forwarding feature that lets you send any mail that comes to your Gmail account to another address. Forwarded gmails come into my inbox ad-free.
If they didn't add adverts when forwarding, I don't see why they'd do it when using POP3.
Re:Forwarding (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The catch is.. (Score:4, Funny)
There's a delay in receiving emails to allow for the Chinese Government to authorise them?
This is it. It's begun already. (Score:5, Funny)
Hardly a week after the coup on November 2nd, and they've already ripped the guts out.
This is precisely -- precisely -- what Hitler did after gaining power, except that instead of enabling POP3, it was putting people in concentration camps. But I mean, it's obviously the same thing, basically. Same general idea. Anybody who's seen that smirking chimp on TV can see what he's driving at. He practically said it. I mean when he said he was going to do stuff, like be in charge of the country. He thinks he's the president now, which is just like Hitler: The Leader. He thinks he's the leader of the country. It's incredible, it's so similar.
I mean it's just exactly the same thing. And nobody voted in Ohio. Nobody. It's all a scam. A total scam. A fraud. A child could see through it.
And now they're trying to make you look at ads on your Outlook. In your email, in the ads. It's so totally corporate. This is corporate, that's what it is, Google is a corporation, in case you hadn't noticed, okay? OKAY? The corporations all voted for Hitler.
God, it's so totally just like Hitler. And now they have the zeppelins, I saw a blimp over Boston today, it was red and white just like the Japanese flag when they were on the same side as Hitler. Didn't you know Hitler had the zeppelins? He did, they had the swastika on them on the tail, they used to be over the rallies in Germany, just like Ashcroft's blimp today. Just the same. Just exactly the same. It's phallic, because they're Christians, they hate black people, that's why. They made people rape Cameron Diaz, because she's black, they hate people.
I saw this coming but nobody listened to me, and now nobody can say it, they haven't said on CBS news that Bush is Hitler! It's censorship, stifling censorship, it's incredible that they have that much control over the TV news that the news can't even tell us the truth that Bush is Hitler.
Re:The catch is.. (Score:5, Insightful)
And how would that be different from spam? If it's a free e-mail company tagline at the end of the message it may be understandable, but if they start injecting full-fledged ads like
Hey Joe,
Good seeing you the other day. We're gonna catch the game next weekend, interested?
Sponsored Google Ad
--------------------
FiNd YOUR ClAsSmAtEs NOW!
http://www.spammersheaven.com/?trackinglink
--------------------
SPORTS betting, largest offshore CASINO!
FREE $20 mAtChInG bEt!!! You WIN!!!
http://www.spammersheavencasino.com/?trac
--------------------
Let me know.
Bob
Not only may it be illegal in some states, people will not use the service. People already get extremely annoyed by bloated Hotmail taglines as it is; this type of thing would be a complete disaster.
Re:The catch is.. (Score:3, Insightful)
This would be bad though, because it would mean that any local spam filters will become useless.
Re:The catch is.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly ... If it is substantially annoying, people won't use it. If people don't use it, it will lose money. Ergo, google won't make it substantially annoying.
(unless they are idiots, but history suggests they are not).
Re:The catch is.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The catch is.. (Score:5, Informative)
Sent and received messages, and no ads where added.
Furthermore, when you enable pop3, you have 3 options:
* Enable POP for all mail
* Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now
* Disable Pop3 (Doh)
You can also choose to
* Keep GMail's copy in inbox
* Archive GMail's copy
* Trash GMail's copy
Sending and receiving is done through SSL-ports, and sending requires authentication.
Re:The catch is.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you used Gmail before?
Having used their web interface.. it DOESN'T MAKE SENSE to actually download all my mail and read it on a mail client.
The interface is so clean, and things load so fast, it is amazing.
Contrast that with email clients.
I'd say there is a lot more appeal to the web interface that just the ability to POP and the 1GB space.
Re:The catch is.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The catch is.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The catch is.. (Score:3, Interesting)
But if *you*, prefer using an e-mail clients, you can. This way, you continue to use gmail and influence your friends, especially the ones that don't have much knowledge about computers to use gmail. Else, you would suggest them whatever you are using that supports pop (Yahoo for instance).
Here's their advantage (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Here's their advantage (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Here's their advantage (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not trying to impugn Google here; I like their service and I might even pay for it instead of paying my current paid-for service. But I am struggling to see their angle here.
Re:Here's their advantage (Score:2)
Another advantage (Score:5, Insightful)
So even if you never see an ad, and they never make a cent through some kind of clickthrough on you, every email that goes through their system tells them more about the contextual online universe.
Google is ultimately in a data mining position. Data is money for them. Email is data.
Re:Here's their advantage (Score:2)
Re:Here's their advantage (Score:2, Informative)
Um, yeah, there is. "Delete Forever." Otherwise, all GMail accounts would eventually become full and useless.
Re:Here's their advantage (Score:2)
Delete Forever (Score:2, Informative)
If you go to the trachcan section of your gmail screen, there is a button in it that reads "Delete Forever". Presumably, it deletes your stuff. Forever.
Re:Here's their advantage (Score:2, Informative)
There isn't even a way to delete emails from your account: you can only "Archive" them.
Not true. You can move a message to the Trash folder, and once it's in there, you can choose "Delete Forever" to get rid of it for good.
Re:Here's their advantage (Score:2)
Without any real active use, just some mailing lists, I've received 47MB already. In just a few months. They're not even very active mailinglists.
Add all those that use google as storage, that get big attachments, and so forth ad infinitum.
Just a guess, but gmail, how many users do they have yet? One million? Ten? Take that numbers, times 100MB
Now remember that thin
you see... (Score:3, Funny)
apple decided to copyright it
Doesn't seem to fit popmail model (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Doesn't seem to fit popmail model (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, you can select "leave on server" but POP client software really can't take advantage of all that stored email. Desktop search, or even an online Google search, while logged-in, could draw from all of those old emails even while you filed and deleted to your heart's content with your local copy in your POP client.
Very sneaky indeed!
Again, this only works because Google is golden. If MS or AOL announced that they were going to keep a permanent record of all of your email, whether you deleted it or not with your client, would raise a firestorm!
I am a bit reluctant. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they will prove me wrong and they wont pull a Yahoo, but for now, I am staying put and using my gmail account as my spam catch all and for its very best feature: geek street cred.
Re:I am a bit reluctant. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I am a bit reluctant. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I am a bit reluctant. (Score:5, Funny)
My apologies to all concerned.
Catch of some other features (Score:2, Informative)
What's the Point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's the Point? (Score:4, Insightful)
My return address for both home and gmail return mail to my domain, thus causing replies to be sent to both places. Because gmail only allows you to define the reply-to as opposed to the 'from,' I set up a filter in gmail such that messages sent directly to my gmail address will forward to my pop3 as well.
Along with the desire to not be dependent on a free service, this is why gmail pop3 will not be used by me.
Re:What's the Point? (Score:2, Interesting)
But if, on the road, you want to look at an e-mail that you sent while at home, you can't. I'm presently using the exact same setup that you described, but I'm definitely going to stop using my "normal" pop3 once I have pop3 access to Gmail, because it simplifies things greatly, and ensures that my offli
Re:What's the Point? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because you still get to keep it online. POP gives you an easy way to archive the mail locally and offline, and also allows you to use an offline client, while still maintaining the "portability" of a web-based mail service.
Re:What's the Point? (Score:5, Interesting)
The people who use POP3 are much cheaper just because they won't be using 1GB.
Google can probably aim to get a 10th of the revenue off of a POP3 user compared to a web mail user.
Also, Google is entering a mature market. They have to really stand out if they want to persuade users to move from other web mail systems.
Re:What's the Point? (Score:2, Interesting)
And a SMTP server, which I think is the best thing they've added.
I will start to forward all my addresses to gmail right now
Re:What's the Point? (Score:2)
A common sense move (Score:3, Interesting)
fantastic (Score:2, Interesting)
Thing is though, the gmail web interface is so good I don't want to use pop3.
*sigh* ignorance is bliss...
Re:fantastic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:fantastic (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact I liked the Gmail interface so much that about 2 weeks ago I killed my email client and uploaded all my old mail into Gmail.
Catch (Score:5, Insightful)
Now I can use gmail on my PocketPC! (Score:5, Interesting)
Gmail needs the *opposite* (Score:5, Interesting)
Free IMAP? (Score:4, Informative)
POP3 access (Score:5, Funny)
Apparently, you have to go around begging people on
Google is really trying to keep their goodwill (Score:2)
They can inject ads in your Email.
They can also send an ad to your Email address once every month.
But being Google they are probably trying to keep the goodwill of the people so my guess is that they will provide some type of service, such as a monthly summary of your correspondence, or something like that, and include ads in those service Emails.
Re:Google is really trying to keep their goodwill (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Google is really trying to keep their goodwill (Score:2)
Here's something they can do.
They can mail you a summary of all Emails that they have received and "parked" in your web gui as spam.
This mail would be sent to you once per day or maybe once per week, depending on your preference. It would have a small obscure little group of text ads and occasionally you'd have to log in to the web gui to "release" an Email that was mistakenly marked as Spam.
Hmm... There must be other services which people would _want_ to have.
IMAP and Gmail (Score:5, Informative)
Q: Does G-mail support IMAP?
Gmail doesn't currently support IMAP access. As part of our ongoing commitment to give our users easy access to their email, we have introduced POP access. We look forward to announcing more features as they become available.
Goodbye screenscrapers (Score:2, Interesting)
I think google realizes that many people prefer the benefits of web-email anyway (there are major advantages) and if a few people want to use pop3, then it won't hurt them too much.
Now
IMAP? (Score:3, Insightful)
IMAP is not that much faster in my experience, though I am given to understand that IMAP is by default more secure than POP3. Anyone know for definate?
Re:IMAP? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:IMAP? (Score:3, Informative)
From RFC 1939 [faqs.org], the POP specification:
TOP msg n
After the initial +OK, the POP3 server sends the headers of the message, the blank line separating the headers from the body, and then the number of lines of the indicated message's body.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:IMAP? (Score:3, Interesting)
I couldn't disagree more. If they just treat each label as a folder for IMAP purposes it should work fine. In fact, if they are really clever (and we know they are) they could design their server so that if you create a new folder from your IMAP client it automatically "populates" using Gmail's search functionality.
I think this could all work great.
The translation wouldn't be perfect, but it would certainly be w
They will put in ads (Score:2)
Now will someone PLEASE tell me how to get a gmail account?
Re:They will put in ads (Score:2)
E-mail me at k.j.powers@gmail.com and I'll send you an invitation.
Crossing my fingers (Score:2)
Behind the glass (Score:5, Interesting)
Nobody has figured out better than Google how to turn a zillion servers into the world's biggest distributed mainframe. Search and mail could be just the beginning. Google has built a platform upon which any variety of multiuser, Internet-wide applications can be built. Yesterday, it was search; today, it is mail; tomorrow... who knows? Maybe an office suite with built-in document management? Wasn't Microsoft supposed to have done this by now? (Hint: they can't because they're saddled with millions of lines of legacy crud.) Google can. Google has the know-how to truly put computing behind the glass again, where it belongs. And once they've delivered it to your desktop computer, they can deliver it to your phone, your set-top box, your refrigerator
Microsoft Already did it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately SMTP server rewrites From line (Score:5, Informative)
It works, but it rewrites your From: line to be user@gmail.com, which is OK if you are using gmail as your home base, but not OK if it is just one of your mailboxes. However, it's their server so they are free to put this limitation on it, I guess.
Re:Unfortunately SMTP server rewrites From line (Score:4, Insightful)
Chris DiBona
possible confusion (Score:2)
However, I seem to recall that Google said in the past that by "Pop3 access", they meant you'd be able to use gmail to download mail from another pop3 account, such as your regular isp or university email for instance. They did not mean you'd be able to use pop3 to download gmail to your home machine.
Now I could be wrong about this, but I think "pop3 access" could mean either of these things in this context, and the forme
The catch, and the profit model, (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like they are hiding this; it's part of the agreement you make to get free email. They have built a pipe through which a huge portion of the world's information flow can pass, and they are using it to learn things about the world and about the structure and hierarchy of human relationships.
The data is saleable, but they can profit from it without ever selling it, or ever letting any human agents access information that uniquely identifies YOU.
Remember, they sell advertising. At a premium price. All marketing and advertising agencies do data gathering, and Gmail is how Google is doing it.
It's a straight-up, informed-consent deal (at least for Gmail account holders- the issues get stickier if you send mail to Gmail because you never clicked through a use agreement) and if you don't want their robots reading your email you shouldn't use the service.
Re:The catch, and the profit model, (Score:3, Interesting)
You make an implied agreement with mail providers when you send email, whether to or from. It's a realitiy. If you don't like that they may scan your email then either don't use email or use some sort of encryption to prevent it. Societaly it is
The catch seems obvious to me (Score:3, Interesting)
The catch is they still have access to your email and will use very sophisticated algorithms involving complex "graphs" (similar to peer-to-peer algorithms) to generate useful information such as relationships (personal and business) and historical data sets. This is in addition to consumer information.
But don't listen to me, I haven't worked for any companies that do the same stuff with similar but more limited data sets.
will gmail support other domains? (Score:5, Interesting)
This makes me wonder, is it possible Google will be adding support for other domains? Maybe you'll be able to get a Gmail address for free, but if you buy your own domain, you can use Google/Gmail for your mail server (either free or with a slight cost). That would be pretty neat, especially with this recent development of POP3 support.
I can imagine Google selling a rackmount Gmail appliance (to go along with the search appliance) for businesses, free @gmail.com accounts for everyone, and free/cheap mail hosting (with your own domain) for power users.
Who knows, that is just my speculation.
Andrew
Nice! This solves a couple problems.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The problems with this (which can be solved using this new POP feature) are:
- Offline access. While wifi access makes Internet access much easier, it is by no means ubiquitous. So, when I can't get online it would be very nice to have an offline copy of my mail. POP3 mirroring my GMail to Thunderbird or Apple Mail will solve this nicely.
- Sending e-mail from other applications. I got my Mom hooked on using Adobe Photoshop Album to organize and share all of her digital pictures. And, after changing ISPs (thus losing her old e-mail address) she changed to GMail. These two things didn't mix well.. PS Album uses MAPI to e-mail via your preferred mail client. With SMTP access via GMail, now everything is simple. (other than PS Album's shitty MAPI support. You have to edit the registry to add Thunderbird or Mozilla to the list of supported mail clients. Even then I ran into strange behaviors..)
--- I checked my GMail account, and it currently does not give me the option to enable POP. I guess they are opening it slowly to all users.
Encryption (Score:5, Interesting)
Does anyone know if Google has put anything in place to prevent pre-encrypting email or are they just assuming that the majority of the people using their service will not bother with this?
Clients w/ Label support? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anyone know of webmail/local clients that can do labels like gmail does? To me, that's the slickest thing about gmail, and i'd kill a man for that feature in thunderbird (I'd code it myself, but my stuff would never past QA, even if I could get it to work
thanks-
Good move for google, no catch for the user (Score:3, Insightful)
Google believe they have a superior product, offering pop3 support will lure new users in, and eventually they will make the switch.
Even if they *don't* make the switch for reading new mail, they will for reading old mail. GMail store a copy of all your mail. It will not delete the mail you retrieve from teh server, just mark it as read (moving it from "inbox" to "all mail"). So when you can't remember where you put a mail with your local client, you will go to gmail and find it with google's search technology. Which will be faster. Just like it today in all cases I have tried has been faster to find information about a product I have bought by asking google, than by looking in the help files and other online documentation provided by the vendor.
Re:Where? (Score:4, Informative)
Look in your Settings / Forwarding
for a switch to turn on pop, if the switch is not there, you're just gonna have to wait.
Re:Hmm. (Score:2)
Re:Hmm. (Score:2)
Keep in mind... This product is in beta. Google creates some of the coolest web products out there... I assume they thought it over, and I assume you don't know their "plan" either.
Re:who needs gmail? (Score:2)
Re:Google Spam? (Score:3, Informative)
so far it beats any other webmail service hands-down and I'm willing to support that with my wallet
Re:Forget that... (Score:3, Informative)
More likely, you just don't notice the ads, since they're so non-intrusive