http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1723553,00.asp
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Google Brings E-Mail Client Access to Gmail
By Matt Hicks mailto:matt_hicks@ziffdavis.com
November 10, 2004
In what it is billing as "e-mail portability," Google Inc. is opening access to
its Gmail e-mail service from desktop clients and mobile devices.
On Wednesday, the company began providing free POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3)
access on Gmail accounts. The rollout is expected to reach all users over the
next two weeks, said George Harik, director of Googlettes, the name of the
Google group overseeing its startup services.
"This [access] is an important part of e-mail because of all the things not
enabled by Web-based e-mail," Harik said.
POP3 access, for example, allows users to read Gmail messages while they are
offline and on mobile devices that support the standard, Harik said.
POP3 is a standard protocol for receiving e-mail and communicating between an
e-mail server and client. Most major e-mail clients, such as Microsoft Outlook,
support the standard, as do competing Web-based e-mail services such as Yahoo
Inc.'s mail.
Once activated, Gmail's POP3 support retains e-mail on Gmail servers by default
while downloading copies to another client. But users also can choose to
completely move messages off the Gmail service, Harik said.
Google's decisions to offer POP3 access for free could become another
competitive strike for Gmail. When Google released Gmail in April with a
gigabyte of free storage, it unleashed a storage race among Web-based e-mail
providers. Top competitors Yahoo:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1612682,00.asp
and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN division:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1616649,00.asp
have since increased the storage levels for their services.
Similarly, while POP3 access is available from other e-mail services, it rarely
is free. Yahoo provides POP3 access as part of its paid, premium mail service.
In September, MSN Hotmail ditched its free access to e-mail through
the Outlook and Outlook Express clients:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1651948,00.asp
Hotmail supports a different standard, WebDAV (World Wide Web Distributed
Authoring and Versioning), for client-based access. Citing spam abuse, MSN
officials decided to switch WebDAV support from a free option to one available
only as part of a subscription plan.
Gmail remains in an invite-only beta test, and Harik declined to say when it
would become generally available or how many users have signed up so far. The
POP3 support follows Google's introduction a few weeks ago of forwarding
features for Gmail.
Gmail has gained attention for placing sponsored-link ads alongside e-mail, but
those ads will not be included in POP3 messages.
Read more here about the privacy debate about Gmail:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1572757,00.asp
Gmail users theoretically could send and receive e-mail without using Gmail's
JavaScript-based interface for viewing ads. Gmail's Web-based interface focuses
on search and grouping together messages related to the same strong
conversations.
"We think our interface is pretty compelling and that most times when users are
connected [to the Internet] they will want to use it," Harik said. "This is more
an expansion of [Gmail] use."
Mountain View, Calif.-based Google plans to add a range of features to Gmail
before fully launching its e-mail service. Those include providing an HTML-based
Web interface to Gmail for systems that do not support JavaScript, Harik said.
--
Always,
Bob Hare, Jr. aka 'Animated GIF Man'
Editor of Official AOL Newsgroups FAQs:
http://members.aol.com/AGMLiteForU/
[ABPEGM + ABPEMBM NG co-moderator]
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