Gmail goes POP3

[Natan]

Link

I'm actually surprised. Isn't the whole point of the 1000mb so that they won't NEED to go POP3 because they won't run out of space?

[Barren]

Some people have more than one e-mail account; AFAIK, POP3 allows them to use programs like Outlook Express to check them all at once, right?

[Natan]

Yup! I personally use TheBat!, but like Outlook, it can check multiple accounts, and since it deletes the message from the server and gets stored on your harddrive, you basically have unlimited amount of email storage (its limited to the size of your hard drive).

[olger901]

I use the free world, Mozilla Thunderbird, and my own webmail using Horde Technology

[Roberdin]

What wrong with POP3? Not everyone has the net access to sift through their emails in one go; and not everyone partiuclarly enjoys reading them from the browser.

Although, since they rely on revenue from their site's advertisement, the move is somewhat surprising.

[Pit]

I think the idea is to get everyone hooked on the GMail drug, then make features like POP3 paid when it goes out of beta. Or, they have discovered a magical, legal money tree and they're using it to fund their madness.

[Roberdin]

No, Google are playing the PR game; everyone loves Google. I highly doubt that they will reduce their current free feature set.

As it stands, Google is worth more than Texas Instruments, which produces more than half of the world's mobile phone microchips.

The extra revenue they are generating from these targetted advertisements will probably be sufficient to offset any losses from POP3.

[uranusalien]

Methinks IMAP4 would be more useful.

[cyberCrank]

I like it and think POP3 would be good too.

Gmail surely needs a freaking Delete button IMHO; I dislike sending every to the Trash folder in multiple steps. But it is free and what can we expect. I will wager that Google will not charge for Gmail nor POP3, but time will tell. I also noticed that Hotmail increased their free storage space from 2 MB up to 250 MB after Google did their thing and expect Hotmail to follow suite with POP3 access too...

[Martin Blank]

Hotmail is actually curtailing the remote access, making it an option only for premium users.