Google To Kill Gmail's POP3 Mail Fetching (theregister.com)
- Reference: 0180519387
- News link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/01/05/1915218/google-to-kill-gmails-pop3-mail-fetching
- Source link: https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/05/gmail_dropping_pop3/
Google buried the decision in a [2]support note rather than making any formal announcement. The company's suggested workaround -- switching to IMAP -- doesn't work for all affected users. Users can still access third-party accounts through the Gmail mobile app, but the Gmail service itself will no longer retrieve messages from external providers.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/05/gmail_dropping_pop3/
[2] https://support.google.com/mail/answer/16604719
wow ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Haven't even thought about pop3 in decades.
What provider these days supports POP3 but *not* IMAP?
Hard to believe any would remain ... POP3 was mostly obsolete during the (Bill) Clinton administration.
Keep in mind, one of the authentication mechanisms in the POP3 protocol is .rhosts ....
Re: (Score:3)
Retrieving email from other accounts via IMAP was never supported so there's nothing to kill there.
Re:wow ... (Score:4, Informative)
This is about the feature in Gmail that allows you to setup so that Gmail automatically in the background fetch email from a 3rd party provider using pop3 into your Gmail account. It's not about accessing your Gmail account using POP or IMAP.
Re: (Score:3)
There are still email providers who give only a few hundred MB (or less) of storage space. Rather than doing the slightly difficult task of handing over the new address to providers and making sure the job gets done right, they are relying on POP3 fetching to move the messages into a bigger cloud mailbox. IMAP wouldn't solve the problem that this mail fetching is used for. All it does is give you direct access to a tiny mailbox instead of proxy access.
Netzero and Juno (Score:2)
Oh no! What will I do about my precious Netzero and Juno email accounts!
These "services" actually only support POP3.
Re: (Score:3)
The relevant part is "the Gmail service itself will no longer retrieve messages from external providers."
This means even if you straight up have IMAP support on your external server (Say, your company / private email server) google wont fetch email from there.
The solution they have listed doesn't work, since being able to use your mobile app to check mail, and being able to actually get that mail are two very different things. [1]jwz [jwz.org] (owner of the dnalounge) has an amazing breakdown of the issues this causes.
T
[1] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/12/today-in-google-broke-email-2/
Re: (Score:2)
"Oh no! What will I do about my precious [Newsgroup] accounts!"
And yet someone did, and history is relived. Email is no different.
I just forward emails (Score:2)
I have a catchall domain going to a gmail address, which then then forwards to my workspace account.
Re: (Score:2)
I tried that in the past. Unfortunately, because all the spam that got forwarded to gmail, my mail server ended up on an RBL.
I ended up having to switch to POP3 fetching. The exact same messages, including all spam, were then accepted by gmail, and properly filtered to the spam folder.
With the removal of POP3 fetching, I will no longer be able to use gmail. I'm looking for an alternative webmail client.
Thunderbird is good on a desktop, but not good on a smartphone. I am already at 12GB out of 15GB of free G
Re: (Score:2)
if you are already hosting your own mail; why not host your own web mail?
[1]https://www.squirrelmail.org/ [squirrelmail.org]
[1] https://www.squirrelmail.org/
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If you are suggesting that I should run it on one of my own systems at home, I won't be doing that because I live in an area where power outages and ISP outages are not rare. I had a 24 hour Comcast outage just last week end. I don't relish maintaining my own server, also. There is power consumption involved, too.
I suppose I could run it on a third party system provided by the current domain ISP. Or use their own shitty webmail. But the next time the ISP raises their price, it will be a PITA to move the dom
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> I am now looking for a suitable webmail service alternative for gmail.
It's early days and I'm not using any of their "advanced" features yet, but I have been experimenting with protonmail and am satisfied so far. Their web client seems pretty good.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks. It looks like it will cost $48/year to essentially replicate what gmail does today with 15GB of storage, which I'm getting close to. $120/year for more storage. The free option is unfortunately not practical for me to even try given the sever limitations, particularly the one custom filter.
Re: (Score:2)
> I tried that in the past. Unfortunately, because all the spam that got forwarded to gmail, my mail server ended up on an RBL.
Exactly. I don't allow users to forward to Gmail, because the issue isn't even whether or not it *is* spam, it's whether or not Google *thinks* it's spam. Google sure doesn't mind being the biggest spam spewer on the planet, but heaven forbid someone wants to forward their own mail to themselves.
POP3 was great in 1996 (Score:2)
Back when you had a computer that wasn't online all the time.
It stopped being so great in 1997 when everyone in your house had a computer that was online all the time.
Re: (Score:2)
I still keep my mail locally, using POP3 via fetchmail. Mostly I'm just too lazy to update fetchmail settings to use IMAP retrieval, if it can even do that. For unimportant gmail stuff I just use browser access and let them store it since those accounts are for mostly junk use and - they dropped POP3 support for fetching a few years ago.
Re: POP3 was great in 1996 (Score:3)
I setup a spare computer to pull my emails down via POP3 as a sort of backup, it's a trick I first heard of during Weinergate, when Ms. Weiner had a laptop backup all her emails in the background.
[1]https://komonews.com/news/nati... [komonews.com]
[1] https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/report-huma-abedin-backed-her-emails-on-anthony-weiners-computer-told-fbi-she-didnt
To address the obligatory... (Score:2)
"bro, who uses pop3 anymore? Are you still on a 56k modem too? LOL crying laughing emoji x8" comments. I still use pop3 (and don't use 56k anymore).
I work many temp/freelance gigs. When entering a new one I'll be at for 2 weeks, I can sit down at my assigned workstation and...
a:| enter my pop3 info into an email client and pull in new emails.
b:| enter my imap info into an email client and pull in 200,000 emails going back 15 years (and three new ones)
c:| use the browser interface which everyone on the pl
Re: (Score:2)
(b) is a failure on your part. Who keeps 200K emails in a single folder? Most IMAP clients can be told to only pull from certain folders, and to limit the number of messages they pull to the n newest messages. If you go with POP3, you either have your email scattered over multiple devices, or you have to tell your POP3 server not to delete the messages after you download them... in which case you might as well just use IMAP.
The Gmail feature seemed like a WTF to me, because didn't it require you to han
Re: (Score:2)
If you manage your own domain, you can set specific POP3 credentials for any mailbox of your choice, in my case, the catchall mailbox. There is no TOS that applies in this case about giving your POP3 password to google for the purpose of fetching.
IMAP lacks server-side filtering at the protocol level. If you use multiple IMAP clients on several devices, that is a major issue.
I relied on gmail's web interface filters. This allowed me to seamlessly move my domain to other ISPs, when one quadrupled their price
Re: (Score:2)
> (b) is a failure on your part. Who keeps 200K emails in a single folder?
All of my folders are on my computer, where they're organized nice and tidy.
I have no idea how they're organized on gmail since I haven't looked at the web interface in at least five years. I don't need to, as that's kind of what an email client is for. I grew out of hotmail when I stopped checking my email at the public library. Just saying
Enshitification never stops. End of gmail for me (Score:4, Insightful)
This is another reminder to never rely on any service or software made by Google, as they can be killed at any time, without any warning. Thanks to msmatch for reporting the story.
While POP3 is an ancient protocol, when used over TLS, it is still a viable protocol to use, even now. And I have been relying on this gmail POP3 fetching feature for years.
I have my own domain, and use the catchall address. At first, I had it forwarded to gmail via SMTP. Unfortunately, because all the spam that got forwarded to gmail, my mail server ended up on an RBL.
I ended up having to switch to POP3 fetching. The exact same messages, including all spam, were then accepted by gmail, and properly filtered to the spam folder.
With the removal of POP3 fetching, I will no longer be able to use gmail. I'm looking for an alternative webmail client. My own domain hosting ISP's webmail hosting is not very good.
Thunderbird is good on a desktop, but not good on a smartphone. I am already at 12GB out of 15GB of free Google storage, nearly all of it used for e-mails. My current phone does not have much storage left. Unfortunately, the storage is not expandable, also due to enshitification.
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Also, this may be about money for Google. POP3 fetching allows someone to effectively use their own domain with gmail, for free. Google obviously can't have that. They want to sell their paid services.
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This is the key: it's about boosting profit for Google, and the best way to do that is to kill all competition and lock in everyone to their ecosystem.
I've been designing, building, and running email systems since before POP existed. I still deploy it on all servers, in parallel with IMAP. (And let me pause to note that I still miss Mark Crispin: his insights, his design sensibilities, his coding skills, everything that made him a highly valuable contributor to the Internet.) There are still valid use
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed, and I made the mistake of relying on gmail's free and excellent webmail filters. I will now go the extra mile to de-google, even if it costs a little bit more money, due to the completely useless support Google offers. I did a free trial for storage earlier this year. There were major bugs with the Google drive Windows client. One of the bugs was the inability for me to report a bug through the drive client after an error. Support kept telling me to report the bug through the drive software. I could
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> Thunderbird is good on a desktop, but not good on a smartphone.
It's not. I switched to FairEmail a few years ago and have been pretty happy
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This appears to be an Android-only client. How do you access your e-mail from a desktop ? What about filters ?
Gmail IMAP (Score:1)
Mozilla's Thunderbird email client has no problem accessing gmail via IMAP, and can consolidate multiple email accounts into a single inbox. IMAP is superior to POP3 anyway, if only because it allows all your devices to access the same email inbox.
Re: (Score:2)
> IMAP is superior to POP3 anyway, if only because it allows all your devices to access the same email inbox.
What makes you think POP3 doesn't allow "all your devices to access the same email inbox"?
I use POP3 exclusively and access the same inbox from different laptops and from my phone all the time. All that's required is a simple email client configuration which leaves messages on the server.
I do have to go in and clean them out occasionally so there's a bit of maintenance involved, but it's not a big deal.
Re: (Score:3)
I do this exact same thing and they can pry POP3 from my cold dead hands.
IMAP is for people who want to leave all their email on someone else's mail server and be subject to their tools for searching/archiving/storage.
POP3 is for people who want to have full control of their email. I have more than 25 years of emails stored locally - every email I have ever sent or received. I have no interest in syncing that to some remote server via IMAP. Nor do I want my local storage to be "secondary" where I have to
Re: (Score:1)
Thats not what they are killing. They are killing gmail service's ability to pop an external box in to your gmail. There is no IMAP alternative.
POP3 usage isn't what you think... (Score:2)
Back when I did email protocols in the Windows division, we learned a weird thing about POP3: it was super popular in Japan.
Why? Because a bunch of email providers would only support fancier protocols like IMAP for the paid accounts. The free accounts were relegated to the POP3 protocol for fetching email.
Re: (Score:2)
What can that achieve? IMAP isn't supported even now (and never was for this workflow, TFA is misleading).