Easy prediction: they'll disable imap access within a year.
(1) I don't have a server where I can run my own mail infrastructure -- I don't think my ISP would be happy with me running a mail server off my cable modem). And
(2) I don't trust Outlook.com not to silently discard mail from randomly selected senders (as I believe Hotmail was known to do). Gmail is reliable.
But otherwise, I'm ready. I've already stopped using the Gmail web interface (retaliation for killing Google Reader). And once I'm no longer tied to Gmail anymore, I can switch to a better IMAP client than Thunderbird.
I like their web UI better than GMail. It is cleaner than GMail and much faster most of the time. It's also worth noting that they now have a beta version of a calendar (with CalDAV) support:
http://blog.fastmail.fm/2014/01/23/calendar-now-available-on...
And they are apparently working on CardDAV.
- the spam filter is not very effective. I have marked as spam a certain kind of spammy newsletters many times but they still come throught.
- No calendar or contacts you can sync to your phone.
Why haven't I left already? Because it works fine and does everything I need.
Why would I leave? The way you ask, you seem to think it's obvious, but I have no idea.
I'd probably bounce back to hosting my own IMAP and using some utility to download my Gmail to it with Push or whatever protocol (HTTP?) that Gmail uses for push.
It would be nice to have Sieve scripts again to filter my mail (Gmail's filtering leaves much to be desired).
On the other hand, disabling IMAP will make sure that people have to look at the webapp, and tie into the Google ecosystem to read their mail. Looking forward five more years, you might even have to have a Google+ account to read your email.
Federation, the ability for having your own jabber network contactable by google talk users and vice-versa, that was (partially) turned off, after a string of spam abuses.
Killing imap would cause 60-year-olds I know to complain at the same time that we would complain. You can't have that broad spectrum complaint. As much fuss as there was over whatever that RSS thing was, I signed up and used it for 6 months and then forgot it existed.
In short: Let's put to bed the idea that Google is arbitrary, they're not. If they look at the numbers and see people not really using the product, they take it out back and put a hollow point through its head. (This is also why I'm bullish about Google Plus...they would have killed it otherwise.)
Ask them about IMAP and their response would be "What??". Your point doesn't support itself.
I tried to type out another paragraph but it was equally as bad. Here is another shot at what I'm trying to get at: They're not the same because I'm willing to bet there are orders of magnitude more users using imap than there were technical people who used and cared about Jabber. Even as a technical person, I hadn't realized Google had removed it and I'm someone who previously used it. And I'm in the small group, not the general public, but I know several people off the top of my head that aren't technical and myself that use imap on a daily basis.
And I seriously doubt it will lose 40% even. It's not like people have many decent options for webmail + mobile mail, especially if you exclude paying for it.
The worry that Google will disable IMAP misses this point. Google gains so much ancillary intelligence from scanning your email, that if they lose market share, their overall ability to target unrelated ads (e.g. during search).
For one, it will force most of them to download the Gmail app.
Second, those iPhone users don't benefit Google -- Google needs to control the experience, the ads etc in order to make money off them.
Give them a choice: (1) go through a messy migration or (2) install another app. Most will probably do (2) without even thinking about it.
And then you have to factor in that worldwide, over 80% of the smartphone users already have a platform where GMail is the default mail app:
Also: because people might want security, such as GPG.
Downsides: Snooping, NSA honeypot, Chinese government hacker honeypot, etc., etc.
Here's one feature my email client has: automatic spell-check, such that emails are disallowed from being sent if they have any spelling errors (with an override, of course). Gmail has a manual-trigger spell-check, while the browser has automatic spell-checking, but neither have a personal (jargon-customized) dictionary built up over decades nor an automatic modal dialog if the message to be sent has a mistake.
I guess automatic spellcheck override dialogs are specialized, eh?
Or, more likely, if you're offline for any reason at all. All web tools disappear in a puff of smoke if there's a problem between you and your ISP. Or, more rarely, between your ISP and their peers.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gmail-offline/ejid...
Currently, the easiest way to manage multiple email accounts at the same time is by using a standalone IMAP client. Five accounts in the sidebar that I can access with a single click, with Unified Inbox at the top!
Gmail's web interface only lets you access one email account at a time. You could have delegated accounts, but they open in a separate tab, and the whole concept of delegation only works for Gmail accounts anyway. Or you could forward everything to your Gmail account and call it a day, but some employers might have a problem with that, especially in light of Google's apparently comfy relationship with No Such Agency.
Personally, I use my Gmail address to subscribe to public newsgroups, but I wouldn't let anything private ever touch a Google server. With a standalone IMAP client, it's very easy to maintain this kind of separation without having to suffer any noticeable inconvenience.
You might want a greater seperation of your inboxes, though, so your results may vary.
Anyway, I can't see why a tech savvy person wouldn't just have a domain and email hosting service instead of gmail and being locked to Google's whims, e.g. the ability to download could be a first step to shuttering gmail since gmail doesn't provide the core tracking data Google uses while creating specific privacy headaches - I.e. gmail is problematic to monetize efficiently.
Maintaining your own email server to the same level of reliability (backups, etc), speed, and functionality as gmail would be a lot of work. Not every "tech savvy" person out there wants to invest the time and resources needed to duplicate what gmail gives them for free.
[Also gmail's web interface is very, very, good, and it's well-integrated with other google products, which are very popular.]
However, I use POP3 and SMTP with a desktop client, not IMAP.
I don't understand people who use the web interface. I guess many people are used to the general suckiness of web-apps.