What we use the Google APIs for — and what we do not
Mail does not travel through the Gmail API. It arrives over SMTP and leaves over
SMTP. The APIs are used for three things, each one authorized by you through
domain-wide delegation:
- Verifying your setup before cutover
- Confirming the inbound gateway and
routing are right before the MX record moves.
- Finding and removing delivered copies
- Searching for every copy of a
message that turned out to be malicious after delivery, and moving them out. A
separate scope from reading, granted separately.
- Account risk telemetry
- Google's login audit — suspicious sign-ins,
leaked-password lockouts, government-attack warnings — and Gmail forwarding
settings and filters that send mail to an outside address. Read-only, off until
you turn it on per domain.
Domain-wide delegation is account-wide by construction: a service
account authorized for these scopes can act on any mailbox in the Workspace
account. Google provides no per-mailbox restriction equivalent to Exchange
Online's application access policy. That is Google's design, not our choice, and
you should know it before granting anything.
Post-delivery removal against a live Workspace account is implemented
and tested against the API, but has not yet been exercised on a production customer
account.