Settle a bet, is creating a webmail to POP program against GMail policies?

[DGath]

"Gmail Program Policies

Prohibited Actions
......
- GMail Modify, adapt, translate, or reverse engineer any portion of the Gmail Service."

If I were to create a program that allows you to use GMail as a pop3 mailbox (i.e. PopGoesTheGMail, Hotmail Popper for MSN, etc...) that is technically against policy right? A company like Google probably wouldn't care, but legally speaking, you can't do it, right?

 

[HardcoreRobot]

They probably would care. If you dont have to go to their site to get your mail, you dont see the advertisements. If you dont see the advertisements google can't get the advertising revenue to support gmail. Unless you want ads injected into the emails, its gotta be viewed in the browser.

Automating the process to access and download the messages probably would fall into the "... Modify, adapt, translate, or reverse engineer any portion of the Gmail Service." category.

 

[Cheetah8799]

correct, against their policy. They have been cracking down on all the other notifier apps lately. They only want people to use the official gmail notifier.

You might want to do some quick searches on the net to find any current gmail to POP projects. I vaguely remember hearing about one a while back.

EDIT: go to sourceforge.net and search for "gmail".

 

[Cheetah8799]

this looks promising

 

[Pretty Cool]

From my understanding, those POP programs are nothing but automated scripts. So, how is it not legal? Of course, Google may not like it and could make subtles changes to prevent those applications from working properly. On the other hand, my guess is that they would have a difficult time of winning such a case in court provided it even got that far. Of course, if you want a professional opinion, you might have better luck consulting a copyright attorney.

 

[Genx87]

None of this is illegal. Just against their terms of service.