wither in the light

GMail is enabling POP3 access to your account, so you can use the email client of your choice to read your mail. These guys just keep getting cooler. The tinfoil-hat brigade is getting their panties in a bunch over it all, of course - this new feature, like so many other GMail features, doesn't have an obvious benefit for Google (in fact it harms them to some extent, in that you no longer are required to use the ad-laden web interface to read your mail). I strongly suspect that they are data-mining the hell out of every piece of email that is sent, but I also suspect they are doing it in a way that is anonymous and not all that intrusive. Besides, regardless of your email transport mechanism, if you are that concerned about privacy and you aren't using PGP/GnuPG, you're a tard.

The POP3 service hasn't been enabled for all accounts yet; the link above shows how to find out if you're one of the lucky ones.