Google Notifier is a little system-tray app that pops up an alert every time a new email arrives in your inbox. I like it because I don't have to have my phone on me or Chrome open to know that I have a new email.
I'm sure that it doesn't actually require any support anymore, it's been stable and unchanged for years (after all, it's a simple little app). And yet, and yet ... they're dropping it as of Jan 31st: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10960?hl=en
They say it's going to stop popping up notifications for new emails, which probably means they've got a dial-home component in there that allows them to turn it off remotely.
I am le sad now.
Or potentially its the server features they are shutting down. So there's nothing to give it data.
Well I would expect it to connect via IMAP just like, say, Thunderbird would do. And they're not dropping IMAP, and Thunderbird still works with Gmail...
Naahhh. Probably some push notification thing. Who knows, it may have been written before they had useful imap support.