Comments on: IMAP, POP, Gmail and the future of email http://www.hawkwings.net/2006/08/31/imap-pop-and-the-future-of-email/ Tips and add-ons to make Apple Mail / Mail.app even better Fri, 09 Jan 2009 02:14:59 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Anthony http://www.hawkwings.net/2006/08/31/imap-pop-and-the-future-of-email/#comment-15367 Anthony Thu, 31 Aug 2006 14:17:09 +0000 http://www.hawkwings.net/2006/08/31/imap-pop-and-the-future-of-email/#comment-15367 You also have to consider where these protocols are used. ISP's don't want their disk space taken up by your gigabytes of email that you don't delete for whatever reason. Personal email from ISP's will stay pop3 as long as email takes up disk space and there is no better method of getting your email from your ISP to your computer. In the corporate world the situation is different. The 'Company" owns all the messages you send and receive and want to back everything up "easily" - which means from a single location - the server. However when you are talking thousands of messages, the imap4 protocol doesn't really hold up very well against impatient sales people on dialup connections. So there are probably many mail administrators out there looking at alternatives - be it webmail or something completely different. (If you know something let me know so I can appease those impatient sales people I have to deal with - they all hate webmail) You also have to consider where these protocols are used. ISP’s don’t want their disk space taken up by your gigabytes of email that you don’t delete for whatever reason. Personal email from ISP’s will stay pop3 as long as email takes up disk space and there is no better method of getting your email from your ISP to your computer.

In the corporate world the situation is different. The ‘Company” owns all the messages you send and receive and want to back everything up “easily” - which means from a single location - the server. However when you are talking thousands of messages, the imap4 protocol doesn’t really hold up very well against impatient sales people on dialup connections. So there are probably many mail administrators out there looking at alternatives - be it webmail or something completely different. (If you know something let me know so I can appease those impatient sales people I have to deal with - they all hate webmail)

]]> By: Tim http://www.hawkwings.net/2006/08/31/imap-pop-and-the-future-of-email/#comment-15358 Tim Thu, 31 Aug 2006 13:35:58 +0000 http://www.hawkwings.net/2006/08/31/imap-pop-and-the-future-of-email/#comment-15358 Good point! And I like your alternative interpretation very much :) Good point! And I like your alternative interpretation very much :)

]]> By: Daniel Jalkut http://www.hawkwings.net/2006/08/31/imap-pop-and-the-future-of-email/#comment-15356 Daniel Jalkut Thu, 31 Aug 2006 13:21:52 +0000 http://www.hawkwings.net/2006/08/31/imap-pop-and-the-future-of-email/#comment-15356 That's an illuminating graph, but we should be careful to not read too much into it. It's a Google Trends graph, so it describes a pattern in search engine requests. We could interpret this in many ways that don't necessarily reflect on the popularity. How many users actually search on <em>either</em> pop3 or imap4? I would assume it's mostly done by developers or IT people looking to support the protocols in software or through their network infrastructure. So one interpretation of the graph is that POP is simply more confounding, and requires more google searching to understand :) Just one of many possible speculations. That’s an illuminating graph, but we should be careful to not read too much into it. It’s a Google Trends graph, so it describes a pattern in search engine requests. We could interpret this in many ways that don’t necessarily reflect on the popularity.

How many users actually search on either pop3 or imap4? I would assume it’s mostly done by developers or IT people looking to support the protocols in software or through their network infrastructure.

So one interpretation of the graph is that POP is simply more confounding, and requires more google searching to understand :) Just one of many possible speculations.

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