First to those who going to cry foul about privacy and Google taking over our lives, please read the excerpt from wikipedia below! 
I came across this info in gmail blog,
Official Gmail Blog: Manage multiple accounts with Mail Fetcher
and even though I have been using it, never thought of it as a big thing! But now I see it. If you have Gmail account and you are halfway there. If you have already not noticed, there is mail fetcher, that lets you retrieve messages from up to five different email accounts. Besides taking advantage of Gmail’s spam filtering, you can also use Gmail to send messages using your other email addresses. This is convenient for users juggling multiple accounts -- log in once from anywhere and access all of your messages from different email accounts (without missing a single Gmail chat). To enable Mail Fetcher, simply click "Settings," select the "Accounts" tab, click "Add another mail account" and specify your settings.
Now for those privacy concerns!
Because e-mail connects through many routers and mail servers on its way to the recipient, it is inherently vulnerable to both physical and virtual eavesdropping. Current industry standards do not place emphasis on security; information is transferred in plain text, and mail servers regularly conduct unprotected backups of e-mail that passes through. In effect, every e-mail leaves a digital papertrail in its wake that can be easily inspected months or years later.
The e-mail can be read by any cracker who gains access to an inadequately protected router. Some security professionals argue that e-mail traffic is protected from such "casual" attack by security through obscurity - arguing that the vast numbers of e-mails make it difficult for an individual cracker to find, much less to exploit, any particular e-mail. Others argue that with the increasing power of personal computers and the increasing sophistication and availability of data-mining software, such protections are at best temporary.
Intelligence agencies, using intelligent software, can screen the contents of e-mail with relative ease. Although these methods have been decried by civil rights activists as an invasion of privacy, agencies such as the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation conduct screening operations regularly within the bounds of the law.
Happy emailing!
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