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.
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.
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 :(
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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! :-)
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.
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.
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.
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.
They did the same with free version of Google Workspace. It's just no longer free.
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.
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 :(
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.
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"
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.
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.
"Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts through POP." seems quite clear.
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.
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.
Learned from this post that Gmail web had POP! Now I'll be mourning loss of a feature I never even used.
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.
Fetchmail ftw
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.
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?)
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.
doesn't work very well these days with SPF + DKIM
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.
Or forward your gmail to another proper email domain.
I just can't live without the Gmail spamfilter. It's just the best. Industry-leading; no question.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I do aliases as well. Never enough. A battle-tested spammer would run s/\+[^@]*// on the address before sending.
Have you tried other things? And not saying just Microsoft.
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.
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.
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.
> Nobody has used POP much in years
Writing in as a current POP user. I use it to import email every day.
TIL what POP meant after three decades. Thanks!
I use POP to maintain control over my data.
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.
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.
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.
only the phone app supports imap. the web app does not, it used to support pop
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.
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.
You can still use a third-party mail client to POP off the server, then use IMAP to send it to Gmail.
Back to the old Thunderbird days I guess.
Some of us are still using mutt!
By now, it's new and quite neat :)
Oh damn.I need to migrate everything.
I guess they couldn't find anyone qualified to maintain the mailfetcher.
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! :-)
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.
Makes sense.
Maybe it causes too many issues? POP is pretty unpredictable when multiple clients access the same server.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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!
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.
There’s probably a security issue and the product owner can’t figure out how to vibe code their way out.
goddamn it