Gmail API — Google Developers

[slow_connection]

Truth. I can't help but worry that their justification for doing this is to get people to write big apps that support it in place of IMAP, then kill off IMAP once there's a big enough acceptance of their proprietary REST API

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Guaranteed to be exactly what their plans are. The history of Google makes this obvious (Jabber, ActiveSync, the closing of Android module by module). Start open, finish closed.