Google’s Gmail now offers IMAP

Google is currently activating IMAP on Gmail accounts. IMAP, or Internet Message Access Protocol, lets you download messages from Gmail’s servers onto your computer so you can access your mail with a program like Microsoft Outlook Express or Mozilla Thunderbird, even when you aren’t connected to the Internet. This is really a pretty big leap for Gmail and it leaves companies like Yahoo, Microsoft and other (free) webmail providers, something they need to be providing in the very near future.