Few days ago Google began giving its Gmail user’s access to IMAP; have to say it’s about God dam time. Google’s free Gmail service has been admired for its massive storage capabilities, streamlined interface, and functionality, but many email power users have never considered using Gmail just for the lack of interpretability. Things are about to be change a lot.

IMAP is not a new technology—it’s been around for over a decade, and its widely supported in modern email clients, even those built into mobile devices. IMAP is based on almost the reverse idea of POP-based mail: instead of downloading mail to your device and deleting it from the server like traditional POP mail, with IMAP users leave their mail on the server, and the server keeps track of what messages you’ve already seen, which messages are new, and how you filed the messages. E-mail providers have been loath to adopt the superior protocol, in part because it requires a significant storage commitment on the provider’s side. With POP, on the other hand, the user carries the burden of keeping all the mail locally.

The new IMAP feature is free, and can be activated within Gmail in the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab in Gmail settings. Now, many email power-users will rejoice, as Gmail is adding IMAP capability to every Gmail account. These will now be able to access their entire Gmail mailbox from multiple clients in a far more convenient way.

This means that Google will have less opportunity to serve ads to those people who’ve been longing for such a feature. It’s possible that Google’s execs feel that once users have a Gmail account they’ll end up on their websites often enough that it’s worth the extra cost of the providing the additional service.