2007 In Numbers: More People Using Yahoo Mail This Christmas Than Gmail

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1. Andrew
   

   December 25th, 2007 at 9:16 am

   thats because Yahoo has been around for a lot longer, and it takes a lot of effort to change your email address(letting your contacts know, printing new business cards etc) + you lose the storage of all your past emails.

   I mean one of the main reasons why I still use Yahoo, is because I have about 8 years worth of stored emails in there

2. Spandana
   

   December 25th, 2007 at 9:24 am

   mail wars are over, and the mix probably won’t change materially. it’s a question of traffic monetization now. besides, it’s hard to imagine that gmail would sustain that kind of growth rate in this saturated market, especially if the ‘good’ aliases are all taken - so the second chart is probably all smoke.

3. B
   

   December 25th, 2007 at 9:38 am

   I honestly can not see how anyone would want to use Yahoo with all those ads and all the ads they put in each mail the user sends out. But I agree with Andrew that is is hard to change email addresses so maybe that is part of it.

4. joe
   

   December 25th, 2007 at 10:00 am

   the key here is growth. Google is kicking yahoos ass.

5. techguy
   

   December 25th, 2007 at 10:15 am

   Don’t forget about Google apps. Just as good as gmail from Google’s perspective, but with your own domain.

6. Jaisen
   

   December 25th, 2007 at 10:28 am

   It’s inaccurate to compare growth rates for a mature product (Yahoo Mail) which has been out for 3 to 4 times as long as a new product (Gmail). Of course Yahoo’s growth rate is slower. The number of users who DON’T have Yahoo accounts greatly outweighs the number of uses who don’t have GMail accounts. Hence the unreached market is larger for Google.

   Google hasn’t dominated “many” of the verticals it enters. Search (which they completely kicked everyone else’s butt in) and Maps (though I wouldn’t say “dominated”). I can’t think of other Google services which have “dominated”.

7. sinha
   

   December 25th, 2007 at 10:36 am

   And what makes you think that Goog will follow the linear curve?
   New products, which are supposedly disruptive in nature tend to break the ground…but eventually they too fall under the same trap (the same reason why Google china is testing Y! like portal landing page)…

   IMHO, assuming Google to follow a linear curve is stupidity and nothing else.

8. moskvich
   

   December 25th, 2007 at 10:42 am

   Where as Google has come to dominate many of the verticals it enters
   Google has entered many markets but succeeded only in a few of them.

9. Amy Wilsch
   

   December 25th, 2007 at 10:52 am

   if google can sustain that growth year after year, which is always doubtful. I have all accounts (hotmail, yahoo, gmail) but I still use yahoo the most b/c everyone has it. Simple matter of being too much work to switch.

   Ha, remember when having a “free” email account was cheesy? Now I can’t imagine the last 7-8 years without it as it’s the ONE constant i’ve had online!

10. Freesms
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 10:58 am

    Gmail is getting higher growth. MSN Hotmail has comeup with good interface. I liked it . Gmail and Yahoo! are the giants in this field. Gmail created lots of craze in online market . My friends were requesting me to invite and get a Gmail account.

11. Jodie
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 10:59 am

    Im glad I use gmail, its the best email out there. But people will stick to what they have because they are too lazy to switch…

    it would be interesting to see of all the new email accounts opened this year, what percentage of them are gmail accounts

12. Ed
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 11:17 am

    This “projected growth rate” is garbage/fantasy.

13. billy
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 11:31 am

    wow another worthless story from Duncan who would have ever thought?

14. shan sinha
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 11:37 am

    Duncan- I’m not sure if you are attempting to push a pro-google agenda, but that is what it sounds like, when I read your posts.

    For example, “Where as Google has come to dominate many of the verticals it enters, email hasn’t been one of them.”

    Google has not dominated any vertical it has entered other than Internet search (and in turn, paid search advertising). Arguably they are dominating contextual click-through advertising as well, but that is an extension of their core vertical.

    They have less than single digit percentage shares in all of their other applications and often times less than 1% market shares in most.

15. Hashim Warren
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 11:51 am

    for their next trick, Google should offer free domain name registration to Gmail account holders, effectively giving you an email address that you never have to change again.

16. Timothy Bevil
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 11:54 am

    I used Yahoo but switched to Gmail. I was impressed with the efficiency of the email application. However, the last six months I slowly switched to the Live services. I have had no problem and I really like the other applications with the Live name. I’m sure when Office Live Spaces goes mainstream, I will be even more pleased.

17. JasonMcIntyre
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 12:26 pm

    I have an account with the 3 big providers - hotmail is my primary acccount, then yahoo and Gmail is my backup account.

18. D.L.
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 12:38 pm

    All the growth in the world doesn’t help Google if most of those users opt for using POP/IMAP to get their mail. Offering POP/IMAP for free may get them more users but it won’t help them with their bottom line.

19. Andrew
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 12:39 pm

    @15 that is definitely something Google can do. I mean a domain registration costs like $10 bucks a year.

    What Google should do is offer the domain registration for free, and then force users to use ad words. Easy to check that a user is actually using it, by having a bot browse the registered sites and checking for ad word code.

    I mean 10 bucks a year, is only 80 cents a month. Which essentially boils down to 1-2 clicks per domain. So can easily get a return on investment and get even higher market share as far as domains reached

20. Deepak
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 12:53 pm

    I have had a yahoo account for a decade or something along those lines, although I use gmail for everything now. It’s spam filter is way beyond anything else, and unlike some other people, I just love the functionality and minimal UI. This comparison is kinda pointless anyway as others have noted. Gmail’s got enough users and if you add up Google apps for your domain etc, its got some good traction.

21. Frerdna
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 1:29 pm

    My gmail account is now not accessible for more than 36 hours !

    Gmail says “error 502 Temporary Unavailable”

    How can we rely on such a service where your main email account is down more than 36 hours without any action from google ?

    I would LOVE to pay for a service, gmail included, if I could be sure that I could rely on them and not have a 36 hours outage without ANY explanation from them.

    It seems that I’m far from being the only one having this “error 502″ problem.

22. Neil Kelty
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 1:35 pm

    What counts as a Yahoo Mail unique visit?

    Not sure if that really tells how many active email accounts. I hit the Yahoo Mail link occasionally just because it says I have a message (usually a Yahoo Alert), but I would consider myself a MAJOR Gmail/Google Apps user.

    I’m on Yahoo all the time for Sports and Finance, so it’d be interested to set a threshold for “active mailers” and then see the numbers. Unfortunately the companies probably aren’t planning on releasing that data.

    So remember, you’re comparing unique hits rather than # of active users…

23. Neil Kelty
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 1:36 pm

    @19 - Andrew:

    What an idea…I wonder if the Adwords TOS would prevent me from starting something like this?

24. Mikael
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 1:56 pm

    How foolish of comscore to assume 50%+ year over year growth rate?
    More realistically acording to my calculations of non linear growth, gmail wont catch yahoo until sometime 2017 (around October)!

    BYe

25. Mitts Kane
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 2:00 pm

    to #3: Yahoo Mail’s current Outlook-like interface is fantastic, while GMail annoys me with its lack of folders and the way it collapses emails together. That’s why I continue to use Yahoo.

26. Adam
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 2:19 pm

    I don’t particularly like either one, but until I can figure out a better solution, I’m sticking with Gmail.

    -A

27. Michael
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 2:23 pm

    Even most impressively, based on your statistical analysis, Gmail will have more active users than humans on the planet by the mid 2010s. Another indication of superior Google technology and out-of-this-world mindset.

    @22 Neil Kelty: Unique visitors are calculated in the same way by Comscore and other companies. They are the unique browsers that visited a site over a specific time period (in this case a month). Cookie churn and other issues over-estimate that number. Custom domains on the other hand under-estimate it.

    Comscore and other measuring companies have traditionally done quite an abysmally horrible job of accounting only based on honstname urls.

    @11 Jodie: new e-mail accounts this year would actually be a very good statistic indeed.

28. Manas Tungare
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 3:35 pm

    Well, there’s so many GMail users who use POP3/IMAP as the primary means of access. These numbers include only browser-based accesses, not all access requests. Many people I know (anecdotal evidence only — do not mistake for real data) switched to GMail because of free POP3/IMAP.

29. Joshua Cohen
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 3:47 pm

    I love Gmail but that chart at the end of your story is meaningless. You can’t just do straight growth rates to project what usage will be like in a few years. I guess it’s too much to expect people to understand math or statistics but given that this is atechnology blog you’d hope a few people realize how worthless that information is. I’m in high school and I know that!

30. TeknoScience
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 4:27 pm

    Many Yahoo, hotmail or AoL users still do not know what Gmail provides to its users. I think Gmail is the best Free email service. BUT as gmail provides good services Hotmail and Yahoo made better services for their users (Live and Beta :))…

    I strongly believe that Gmail will have more unique visitors before 2010….

31. David
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 5:18 pm

    yes,i am use gmail too
    and i think people will take time to switch to use gimail
    because gmail is the best,and just take time ,students use gmail much often

32. Chris Shieh
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 5:36 pm

    @28, @22: I think you two had pointed out the main problem of this staistics. While Yahoo mail users access the web mail by clicking into Yahoo mail page and being counted in comScore, GMail users like me, mostly use POP3/IMAP to get our Gmail and only click into GMail page when necessary (out of office).

    I own both Yahoo mail and Gmail. But I was completely disappointed about the spam filter capability of Yahoo mail. You know what I would see in my Yahoo mail account even I did not use it? Many many spams…that didn’t get filtered.
    With Gmail, I have enjoyed the feeling of spam free for a long time. The Gmail spam capability is so good that I even imaginate that if Gmail can provide paid spam filter service for my company.

33. Ballmer
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 7:51 pm

    Of Course! Gmail stinks and is limited by Gaggle!

    fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

34. Jorge
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 8:43 pm

    I’ll switch to Gmail when they close all the enormous security flaws in their webmail application, like the cross-site exploits. The junk filter could use a lot of work too.

35. Matt
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 9:17 pm

    I wonder how much of this is because of all the ATT/Yahoo DSL users. They are set up with a special ATT/Yahoo homepage and Yahoo email by default. 95% of these users probably have no idea there are alternatives, and even if they did, would never bother changing.

36. Microhard
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 9:29 pm

    Lol…Ballmer’s giving a shout from Blogger to say that Google sucks. Huhh???

37. uploadchoice
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 9:48 pm

    I read somewhere about this research, more percentage of Yahoo users are female.

38. Planet Malaysia
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 9:51 pm

    Let’s check this statistic in year 2008 again…

39. Sri
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 10:55 pm

    Though I have accounts with all 3 (all “actively used”), like others have said, the one I use most is also the one I’ve had the longest: Yahoo.

    However, in my own experience (based on looking at the subscriptions to some email-based services we offer), Hotmail blows the others out of the water in terms of number of users, while Yahoo and Gmail are almost tied - but with Yahoo still having the edge for the 2nd spot… the breakdown of subscriptions to our emails is roughly: 50% Hotmail, 14% Yahoo, 13% Gmail, and the rest “Other”.

    Note that any subscribers we have with “live.something” addresses are currently still classified under “Other”, and aren’t rolled into the Hotmail numbers.

    This may also just mean that more people use Hotmail as their junk/subscription account, with their “real” webmail acocunt somewhere else…

40. Juice
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 11:01 pm

    the last chart probably reveals that Duncan has only a brain of 10 years old.

41. blah
    

    December 25th, 2007 at 11:56 pm

    good analysis. yeah, #of unique gmail visitors will soon exceed the population of earth.

42. Ronnie
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 12:04 am

    I dont have too many contacts in gmail, I surround myself with people I value as smart people, I have about 30 people using gmail and 2 using yahoo. there are also 20 people using hotmail, but I think that is because of messenger.

43. zedwards
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 5:38 am

    Egh…yahoo has a crap spam collector. Unbelievable.

44. Erik
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 8:37 am

    I use both Gmail and Yahoo - I have used Yahoo since it came out, but I use it less and less. Yahoo is too slow, the search is poor, and the anti-spam doesn’t work well.

    Additionally, have you tried to use both web-based email apps on a mobile browser, like an iPhone? (Yes, I know I don’t need to use the web browser on the iPhone, thanks). The Yahoo folks just don’t seem to “get it” anymore. Kind of a shame, really.

45. ABC
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 8:45 am

    Yahoo sucks…spam still gets into the inbox. Gmail = no problems

46. mak
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 8:47 am

    I’d still rather use Gmail than Yahoo Mail

47. Logical Thinker
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 9:03 am

    Well for one, Yahoo! has a nice installable client. Gmail didn’t. Also, I think that trying to organize and read email the way Gmail forces you, is to forward for most. Personally, I use Gmail with a client, because using the web based version makes me nuts.

48. jmplisson
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 9:04 am

    Gmail is a very good Webmail especially for the filtering of the spams. However, it misses an interface a little more sympathetic with use of the mouse, the menus contectuels and the tabs. It misses also unlimited storage.

49. Richard
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 9:05 am

    Look at demographics. Gmail has the lion’s share of in-the-know Internet users - many Yahoo types either are welded to their old addresses or just don’t know anything’s changed since 1997.

    Yahoo has a pretty huge search volume as well, but I get zero searches from it, very few from MSN and tons from Google. But for grannies who learned only one search engine…Yahoo works just fine.

50. Rahul
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 9:13 am

    Yahoo has free unlimited storage
    Google has a “growing” storage
    i pick unlimited yahoo

51. Saim Baig
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 9:15 am

    I used Gmail.
    Maybe Yahoo did what is mentioned above but i think Gmail is way better.Although Yahoo is in the market from early days as you said,i prefer Gmail.

52. Rahul
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 9:17 am

    Yahoo has a big huge server on thier side

53. bora
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 9:33 am

    Smart people use Gmail. Smart people are a minority.

54. dbkguy
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 9:50 am

    I have both Gmail and Yahoo mail and personally I prefer Yahoo mail. In fact I have been slowly phasing out my Gmail. I just don’t like the Gmail user interface.

55. theFuManchu
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 9:51 am

    Having seen this and other pro Yahoo articles on Tech Crunch, it’s obvious TC is biased towards Yahoo, in the guise of impartiality.

    Tech Crunch = sux!

56. inc
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 9:52 am

    We have no real way of see the the actual number of users using the google mail system short of asking google. I use a google apps mail accounts with a number of my domains. I also host DNS for a large number of domains and many people have their mx records pointed to google’s mail servers. I also have a hotmail account(my first email address) and yahoo. The main reason I like gmail other then using my own domain name is the new imap feature. I can check my mail from my phone and don’t have to see a ton of ads like yahoo mail.

57. mopata
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 9:54 am

    I’ve got to say, GMail is the best way. Anyone thinking otherwise hasn’t learned of all the other services integrated with GMail. Have you tried http://www.google.com/ig page and added all your favorite feeds and gadgets? Try it, you’ll like it.

58. pico
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 10:56 am

    mopata are you kidding? you’ve obviously never used Yahoo widgets or even a MyYahoo page. They have 10x as many “gadgets”, and they’ve been working on them since the turn of the century. Tell the dancing homer simpson yahoo widget on my desktop that tells me when I have a Yahoo mail or IM that they don’t have enough “services integrated” into yahoo

59. Jim C.
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 11:02 am

    Doesn’t all the spam on Yahoo count in the totals?

60. B
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 11:33 am

    I can’t believe nobody is talking about the annoying Yahoo banner ads. My friend who uses Yahoo and pays for it started to get banner ads in his mail. He called them to report it and they said “yep, paid customers get banners now just like free customers”. That alone would be more than enough reason for me to switch to Gmail. I’ve also never seen better spam handling than Gmail, I’ve been using it for a couple of years and have probably had about 5 spams get into my inbox in all that time. Pretty amazing.

61. Folletto Malefico
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 11:50 am

    1. Where’s the news?
    2. Why should Google care of the numbers of Yahoo mail?
    3. GMail has free POP and IMAP.

62. Folks
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 11:52 am

    I have been increasing switched back to yahoo mail. Gmail used to be OK, but after the recent 2.0 change, Gmail becomes so slow, it is now slower then the ajax-crazy yahoo mail, the yahoo mail multi-tab interface also beats gmail awkard ui, yahoo mail has built-in RSS support and can chat with live and y! messenger within your mail, which wins me over.

    for those saying yahoo mail sucks in search, you probably havn’t used their mail for a long time. yahoo mail search is just the best in the class, you can refine your search all along the way using on a lot of criterias.

    gmail used to be great, but it is TOO DAMN SLOW now! what a wonderful way to ruin a wonderful product, i just hate that “loading” appear on my screen for 3 seconds, how come a such simple ui takes so much time to render on screen?

63. Kevin
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 12:07 pm

    In response to Folks, I use Gmail and have never had an issue with load time. Gmail works great for me, and I cannot stand the ads that Yahoo puts in all the emails!

64. thatoneguy
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 12:16 pm

    yahoo is provided through my ISP, SBC, and delivered to me through Apple Mail. tell me again why I need a gmail account, or why it matters?

65. Bala
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 12:20 pm

    @25 Labels > Folders. Label has all the features of Folders + you can label a single msg with multiple Labels (like “Work” + “Read Later”). Anyone who can comprehend labels will agree with me.

66. William
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 12:41 pm

    Yahoo! Mail interface blows Gmail out of the water. Gmail is so 1990 compared to Yahoo! Mail. The only thing I like about Gmail is how they aggregate conversation. Even that takes time to get used to. Try writing an email while browsing for other emails. It’s awkward as hell in Gmail, at Yahoo! Mail, all you do is switch between your inbox and compose tab, simple and fast!

    And Duncan, Google does not dominate every market it enters, it’s the other way around, Yahoo! dominates almost every categories except search. Get your facts straight.

67. John
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 12:43 pm

    I use Yahoo mail to keep ’search’ and ‘webmail’ functions separate. I don’t want those keeping my email to also know what I search for. I choose Google’s search because it’s better and cleaner. Yahoo’s free webmail has a lot of annoying ads but I’ve got the ‘pay’ version to get rid of that. Ideally I’d host my own webmail but Yahoo’s servers respond more quickly than those of my web host and their software is better.

68. dikiz
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 1:44 pm

    lol @ “projected growth rate”. Complete bullshit

69. Folks
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 1:58 pm

    In response to Kevin, I have had this slow problem for gmail ever since the so called gmail 2.0 launched. yahoo’s ajax crazy web mail used to be very slow to load, but now it almost renders instantaneously on my screen. I am really surprised by the difference since yahoo mail is much more richer in UI than gmail, but now it loads even faster than gmail.

    gmail’s spam filter is great if you don’t use it much. I have had two gmail accounts, one I used for ebay, craiglist, newsletter stuff, after 3 years of usage, the account is practically useless now. everyday I get over two screens of spams in my inbox. another gmail I have kept for “real” communication between friends, and it has been really great so far.

    to William, I agree gmail’s UI is awkward since it wants to do everything in full-screen. there are some way to get around this, one is to turn on the keyboard short-cuts, and use shift+C to open a new compose window. Tech people and Google fan will like it since it gives a perception that they are smarter than others by knowing some new tricks, but I still think it is a really stupid design to make the UI so troublesome for average joes out there. I just hope they can adopt the multi-tab interfaces like yahoo mail, so I can do everything in one browser window.

70. Mike
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 3:12 pm

    Yahoo has a ace up it’s sleeve:
    http://yodel.yahoo.com/2007/09.....damn-cool/
    http://www.zimbra.com/products/hosted_demo.php
    Oh and comcast is gonna use it: http://www.zimbra.com/blog/arc.....aging.html

71. subcorpus
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 11:02 pm

    i have both gmail and yahoo …
    though i use gmail for all my emails now … i still prefer to have a yahoo account … as some times i just can;t seem to access my gmail …
    sometimes for hours …
    gmail is good and all … but it has its downtimes … long downtimes …

72. b28
    

    December 27th, 2007 at 2:20 am

    YES…GMAIL BECAUSE OF FREE IMAP HANDLING

73. Doug Roberts
    

    December 27th, 2007 at 7:21 am

    I use Yahoo mail because my work requires I use Trillian IM to correspond with our New York office.

    So what’s the advantage of Yahoo mail here? Trillian notifies me when I get a new Yahoo email. No Gmail support in Trillian that I know of.

    Doug

74. Roger
    

    December 27th, 2007 at 12:23 pm

    I cant understand how any type of business would use Yahoo Mail or Gmail for any sort of serious client or supplier facing email. I know Im mentioning a name but for Hosted Exchange we use http://123together.com. I pay a bit but I sleep at night.

75. nexusprime
    

    December 27th, 2007 at 4:46 pm

    Oh God,

    More evidence that statistics needs to be taught more extensively in our school system.

    Fucking Fail.

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77. Ray Gallatin
    

    December 28th, 2007 at 5:08 pm

    I used to use yahoo and switched, because gmail has so much space for your messages and the search features put yahoo to shame, besides I never could get used to telling somebody blahblah@yahoo.com it just does not sound professional at all (yahoo) sounds like a rodeo cowboy or something.

78. peter guszti
    

    December 28th, 2007 at 7:31 pm

    Gmail Sucks, I got two emails, 48 hrs after people sent it to me, and I lost 50 eur because of it. bloody google mail. I even posted this article on my blog, great article, and i put up some extra comments, http://www.opentopix.com/topic.....than-gmail

79. C Melody
    

    January 9th, 2008 at 8:47 pm

    I’m still using the classic Yahoo mail interface..

    but whatever happened to the little arrows in the tabs (”Mail”, “Addresses”, “Calendar”, “Notepad”) that gave a drop down menu when clicked on? They seem to have disappeared (although re-appear sporadically)..

    Also, the mail search function, which used to be great, is now completely crippled. You can never find the e-mail you want. This kind of defeats the purpose of unlimited storage. Will Yahoo address these problems soon??

    Yahoo’s main strength seems to be great reliability and speed of delivery for both incoming and outgoing e-mails.. for this reason I will stick with it, but I hope the problems with search in particular can be fixed soon..