Google is removing two key features from Gmail to strengthen customer loyalty

Gmail continues to change its capabilities for managing external mailboxes

Speaking of ongoing updates, Wired reports that Gmail is now dropping support for the POP protocol and Gmailify. These tools were popular among users because they allowed multiple accounts to be consolidated into a single Google interface.

What’s actually changing
* POP – an old protocol for downloading mail from a server. Disabling it shouldn’t heavily affect ordinary users, as POP simply downloads messages in full and stores them locally.

* Gmailify – a service launched in 2016 that imported messages from Outlook and Yahoo and applied Google spam filters to them. It also allowed the use of some Gmail features (such as labels) for third‑party mailboxes.

Starting this quarter, new Gmail users will no longer have access to POP and Gmailify. By the end of the current year these functions will be disabled even for existing accounts.

How it will affect users
* Mobile devices: after Gmailify is turned off, email can only be checked through the app, but Gmail’s sorting rules will stop working.

* Storage: copies of messages from external mailboxes will no longer be stored in Google Cloud. When a message is deleted in Gmail, it disappears immediately from the original service as well.

* POP advantages: although POP is considered “primitive,” it provides full downloads of messages, which is convenient for backup. For those who still want to work with multiple email accounts via a web interface, you can set up mail forwarding to Gmail, though sometimes this is a paid service from providers.

Thus Google is gradually eliminating old mechanisms for integrating third‑party mail, leaving users with more modern and simplified ways of handling electronic correspondence.