On Sat, 2016-09-17 at 07:34 -0600, Greg Woods wrote:
Google *Is* trying to discourage use of IMAP. They want everyone to use their API's (via the web interface or a Gmail-specific app). Their tech support people have told us this much. Whether they are actually causing failures to discourage IMAP use is, of course, pure speculation. All I can say there is that there are people who believe they are doing this based on their own tests. Anecdotal evidence only. Take it for what it's worth.
Just to follow up on this, the Google Developer's documentation on the Gmail API (https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/guides/) explicitly states that "The Gmail API should not be used to replace IMAP for full- fledged email client access. Instead, see IMAP and SMTP". They further state (https://developers.google.com/gmail/imap_extensions) that "Gmail provides a set of IMAP extensions to allow authors of IMAP clients provide a more Gmail-like experience through IMAP. Developers integrating Gmail features into their web or mobile apps may instead want to use the RESTful Gmail API."
To paraphrase: if you want to use Gmail via a web app, use their API. If you want to use it via a client program, use IMAP. Seems fairly unambiguous to me.
poc