>>>I get it. Thank you for clarifying. When I had a problem with my Outlook connecting to gmail, I was doing the same thing: getting emails using the browser.
>>
>>So now Google has you where they want you: they have your emails, and you don't.
>
>I am not at all a Google's defender. But, I do have my emails even after switching ti IMAP. That is, the emails sent to me which I get in Outlook reside in an .ost file. Therefore, even if a message is deleted on the server, I still have it on my PC, in an .OST file.
>Why then, do you say that "you don't"? Please explain.

Didn't work that way when I was on IMAP. The messages moved on the server would get moved on my disk as well, and vice versa - I moved some messages to trash on my side, and they got moved on the server as well, which their recipients didn't really like, because they vanished for them as well :). Luckily, there were only a dozen of them and I was able to move them back.

Don't know how you can test for this, perhaps see if there's an option "don't keep on the server when older than 14 days" or some such, and then see if they vanish on your side too.