[warp]

Google nowadays just seems afraid to store personal data. Google have moved your maps history/timeline to be on-device only, seemingly in response to geofence warrants. They're also deprecating health (Google Fit) APIs, and moving that data to be on-device.

So, removing POP (where they need to download emails to their servers), and only supporting IMAP (where emails stay on the third-party server) via their GMail app, that would be consistent with a policy to store as little personal data as possible. (it could also be completely unrelated :)

[sumanep]

IMAP was never supported and is still not supported for external account un gmail web. And they don´t remove pop. You can use pop to access your gmail in any email client or in the app if you wish.