Yeah I fully expect imap to disappear in the next few years. I've started migrating to domains I own for this reason.

I can see them keeping it around for enterprise for a bit longer, though.

I think it will stick around as long as it is the way the iOS Mail app connects

I don't know. Seems like an easy way to force everyone on to the iOS Gmail app. People aren't going to change their email address because it doesn't work with the iOS mail app.

I assumed nothing. If you sync regularly via imap you could switch providers tomorrow and lose nothing.

Good for you, that's the smart way to use e-mail. But most people, many of in tech and many of them knowing better, rely on GMail's web and mobile apps.

Also, unless you're using IMAP to sync the entire mailbox, you'd still lose. If your mail program only stores e.g. last 30 days of mail locally, and lets everything else live on the mailserver, then you'd only have 30 days worth of e-mails left.

This would be assuming that google opted to drop imap with zero warning AND you weren't smart enough to sync all your mail.

The first is out of character for google and the second is totally within your control.

All your mail is for most people merely GB at most per user.

Uh, you realize that imap support has been in GMail for its entire history?

Google Talk had XMPP support for its entire history... until they killed it

So?

Doesn’t mean they can’t get rid of it.

Getting rid of say outlook support would greatly weaken Gmail.

Furthermore if you have an up to date sync on the day imap support ends then you have all your email and need face only changing over to a new address or if you already use a custom domain logging on and changing the email provider.