You are not reading that wrong… Gmail now has IMAP!
Note: They are rolling the feature out to select test accounts now. If you do not have IMAP options in your settings, you are not cool enough. Google will most likley do a full scale roll out shortly.
For ages, Gmail has been strictly POP3-only for external access. It got the job done, but it lacked functionality. There are a few key differences between POP3 and IMAP4 (at the user level) that make the addition of IMAP very exciting news. With traditional POP3 access to email, you generally are required to download the message (thus removing it from the email server). This sucks if you use a web interface (such as Gmail) & a remote client or mobile device equally… you would be missing emails from the web interface as they were downloaded to the remote client or mobile device. Google tried to combat this problem by adding a “keep on server” option. This was cool, but now things you do to the emails do not sync between the web interface and the remote client or mobile device (such as an email being marked as ‘read’). IMAP solves these problems! With IMAP you aren’t removing the email from the server on download, and all actions performed on an email, are synced between the clients and server. And the best thing of all? IMAP PERSISTENT CONNECTIONS! Think Microsoft Exchange-like functionality… without Exchange (or Microsoft). You can have a constant connection to an IMAP server and be notified instantly of new mail and have changes synced on the fly. This is why IMAP rules.
Good job Google. Good job! I have been waiting for a LONG time to see IMAP available on my account. I use Gmail for domains, so I have @nexdot.net and a bunch of my other sites hosted at Gmail. I was previously using my Motorola Q to access them all via POP3… it sucked. Now I have switched them all over to IMAP and I couldn’t be happier.
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ctx=%67mail&hl=en&answer=75726