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"Single point of failure" means a point at which a failure effectively breaks the entire system or workflow. A system may have many SPOFs, which is worse than a single SPOF, which is, in turn, worse than no SPOFs (that is, the desired case is no single failure kills forward progress).

This is true, but sometimes be introducing a new risk (point of failure) to the system, you get the ability to route around another. In this instance, separating POP and Gmail gives you the ability to route around Gmail when it's down.

Yes, extra points of failure may include:

- Having webmail which is not protected with two factor authentication

- Enabling POP/IMAP which also does not have two factor authentication

No, adding more points of failure doesn't make the first potential point of failure more fail-proof, or anything like that.

If adding a new layer (gmail) creates a new point of failure without creating any new resilience against failure, you're putting yourself into a bad position.

Think about failure like resistance. Points of failure in parallel gives less overall risk of failure. Points of failure in serial (like adding a front-end) gives greater overall risk of failure.