Google drops its Google Notifier

[Thorin]

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.

[Tom]

Or potentially its the server features they are shutting down. So there's nothing to give it data.

[Thorin]

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...

[Tom]

Naahhh. Probably some push notification thing. Who knows, it may have been written before they had useful imap support.