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How exactly is the data from gmail gathered so quickly? Presumably they are using a gmail API, but does that mean they are polling very frequently?

I guess another way to do it would be to create an auto forward to greplin filter in gmail when a user connects their gmail account but that seems wrong.....

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We use IMAP IDLE: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2177

Is it used for indexing or at the moment query hits the search box? (I am interested in how this process works in more words than 4 and less than in that tech spec that i am illiterate about, sorry for that)

For GMail, our syncers hang out on an IDLE'd IMAP connection and process (and then index) whenever a new message comes in.

Edit: So, to clarify, it's used to trigger an update to the index. Hopefully this happens as close to the time the message hits the inbox as possible.

So for every Greplin user you have a TCP connection open to Gmail's IMAP server? How can that possibly scale in the long run?

Data is indexed to Greplin's servers

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