Future Opera: Opera’s M2 as enhanced Client for Gmail

Originally I wanted to start the feature examples with the label-topic (no, it's not boring), but I already wrote twice about Google. Therefore I want to deliver one idea towards that first. In fact it has been my first big idea for future Opera.

M2&Gmail – the idea
*There is a similar approach to email: Gmail and M2 don't use folders but several kinds of access points, a strong and fast search and an easy to use and efficient front end.
*The emails from all accounts could be synchronised between M2 and Gmail. This is giving the user 1. flexible online access via different platforms and from different places with Gmail and 2. offline storage and usage of email and easy configuration in M2, which will be the main frontend to control the synchronisation settings. That would be the first step to deliver groupware features like MS Outlook / MS Exchange.
*Opera needs the abilities to write HTML-emails, more flexible support of labels and a common technology to exchange emails with the Gmail-server.
*Gmail would need a common technology to exchange emails with the M2 client.
*Part of it could already be done today for an single Gmail account (to include other accounts see next point):

1. Gmail stores outgoing email which is sent via SMTP-client and delivers sent mail written in the web frontend via POP3 to the mail-client (locally stored in inbox instead of sent mails).
2. Incoming emails are delivered via POP3 to the client and could keep a copy on the server.
3. Labels are not transferred yet.

*With the means of forwarding all emails from all other email-accounts to the Gmail-account (or if Google will implement the feature some day transferring the mails via POP3 into Gmail) and using only the Gmail address to send mail (the web frontend works with other email-addresses, too) there is already a way to have an online/offline solution. But it is inconvenient:

1. set up every single account for forwarding
2. doing filters or any other way of sorting separately in Gmail and in the client
3. have emails either two times downloaded in the client or having no easy (built-in) possibility to show only the emails from a single account

*Actually I set up my email-accounts this way after a loss of 1 month of sent email (now I have an automatic online backup) and the wish for easy online-access for my emails on holiday with my PDA (via PDA view of Gmail).
*Although synchronisation could be done with the on both sides existent transfer protocols SMTP and POP3 it will be reasonable to use specialized and capable protocols, ie XMTP. I have to admit I don't know very much about XMTP and new email protocols (maybe there are better ones), but I got the feeling that would be pretty much the way Google would like and that it will be a good choice for future.
*Advantages for Google are having an email client for its techniques and more emails to use for their personalised search.
*Advantages for Opera (besides it is really cool and useful for the users) are mainly attention and money. Additionally being a part of the Google-concept would make it easier to have new Google services (and even the old ones) work properly with Opera from the beginning (what will make it more probable to have other companies doing the same). But that is mainly a topic of treaties and market share.

Alternatives

• Although this could be done with IMAP this would not be a good choice: it is folder based, follows another philosophy about email-handling and IMAP doesn't work properly within a lot of clients since a long time (what makes me think it must have strong technical disadvantages).
• This could be done with another mail-service and not Gmail. But the advantages of attention and money will be most probably much smaller. Additionally I don't know another webmailer with a philosophy about email-handling such close to Opera's M2.

Impacts (rough estimations):

• Costs will be medium to major (more than major couldn't be done in a major version)
• Time needed: 6 month (more when negotiations run slowly)
• Operas file size will increase by 40kB, core untouched (important for mobile platforms)
• Performance is a critical point – M2 until Opera8.54 sometimes freezes for the time fetching emails, what would be a no go for a longer process of synchronisation
• Market share would probably increase significantly due to the additional attention – by +6% (ie from 3% to 9%), if Opera is the first and single client working with Gmail synchronisation for at least 4-6 month. Already only because it is Google and Opera would be on the list of recommended software quite a number of first time users will try and like Opera.

Closing words
Doing this feature is not mainly about technical questions. It is mainly a political decision. And this decision has to be made and negotiated by both companies. There will be a bigger dependency on and interdependency with Google although both companies will and should build up open systems and use open standards (Gmail could be synchronised with other clients and M2 could synchronised with other servers). On the other side it is promising to boost up desktop revenues when Opera is the first to do it.