You do realize this is there to amortize the free actual service usage?

I understand that paid users subsidize free users, and having paid-exclusive features incentivizes people to pay for their accounts. That doesn't make it acceptable to lock down something as fundamental as IMAP and SMTP access, which is freaking nuts.

You speak like IMAP is something as fundamental as water, it's not, it's just a protocol. And the bridge also isn't really useful on mobile, so for most of their users, it's not useful. (People using desktop email clients are a minority)

IMAP is fundamental to email. And you make a good point, the bridge really isn't enough.

No, it may be philosophically, but in practice it's not. It may have been some time ago. Now, the huge majority uses 1. Gmail with the corresponding webapps 2. MS exchange protocol.

The only thing really fundamental to email is SMTP.