Paul writes:
The benefits of IMAP are obvious to everyone who has
looked at it in any depth, and yet it is very thinly
deployed. The main reason: the perceived additional
administrative overhead.
A more significant reason, perhaps: IMAP is a solution looking for a
problem, in most cases. POP3 provides a way to move mail from a server to a
user agent, and that is all that is really required for 99% of all users.
Organizations that use IMAP are often in a position to simply adopt a
proprietary system with even more advanced functionality, such as Notes or
Exchange. The average Internet user, however, has little incentive or need
to try IMAP.
But they believe that the overhead of the needed
trust system, and the cost of losing mail that didn't
go through the trust system, is simply too high.
I agree. Doing much more than they are doing now would get very expensive,
very quickly.