Gmail Adds POP Fetching Feature
Gmail added a new feature that lets Google’s mail site retrieve email from up to five additional email accounts in a single Gmail account. So long as your other email has POP access (like your work email, but not always your Hotmail), you can dump it all into Gmail, letting you manage all your email accounts from one place. If you love Gmail’s interface, this feature is a godsend (although not all accounts have it yet).
Get mail from other accounts
Now Gmail can check for the mail you receive at your other email accounts. You can retrieve your mail (new and old) from up to five other email accounts and have them all in Gmail. Then you can even create a customized ‘From:’ address, which lets you send messages from Gmail, but have them look like they were sent from another one of your email accounts. Please note that you can only retrieve mail from accounts that have POP3 access enabled. Learn moreThis feature is currently only enabled for a limited number of users. We’re working on making it more available soon. Look for it in the ‘Accounts’ tab in Settings.
Michael Arrington says “Gmail just got perfect“. Om talks up the new feature, but notes “GMail’s UI is an acquired taste” (absolutely!). I’m still an Outlook person, and a lot of people always will be, but Gmail is popular for those who don’t want to be inundated with features. It may never be what Yahoo Mail and Windows Live Mail are becoming, but Gmail fulfills its own purpose for people, and for those people, it got a little more useful.
I’d still like to be able to download my spam folder (label?). If you’re using POP, you have to be confident in Google’s spam filter, and if you aren’t, you have to keep checking your spam via the web interface.
I can understand they haven’t done it so far, due to two reasons:
- Increased bandwidth usage (although small if this option were opt-in)
- Decreased ad revenue (POP-users will visit the web interface less).
I guess I’ll just have to add all my contacts to Gmail in order to prevent them from being flagged as spam - luckily I’ve been tracking my e-mail contacts nicely for the last two years or so.
Comment by Tim | December 11, 2006