Email remains one of the most popular of online services. Companies such as Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft have offered free online email since the earliest days of the internet. Google was late the party, launching Gmail in April 2004. Where as Google has come to dominate many of the verticals it enters, email hasn’t been one of them. This Christmas many more people will be using Yahoo! Mail to send Christmas well wishes than will be using Gmail.
Statistically this is where tracking online email popularity becomes difficult. This year Microsoft has launched Windows Live Hotmail with users logging in via its various “Live” properties, making it difficult to place exactly how many users were logging in and using Live and Hotmail email addresses. In April comScore placed Hotmail at 47 million unique visitors. No figures were available from comScore on Live.com traffic (which includes search and related traffic as well) or Windows Live Mail, although sites such as Live.fr hit 154,000 uniques in November and Live.de did 1.39 million. AOL remains a fairly popular choice for email as well, with comScore reporting 42.3 million uniques in April.
There are still no shortage of Gmail fans out there, but at its current growth rate Google wont be catching Yahoo! Mail until 2010. Yahoo showed 3.21% growth for the 12 months to November 2007 compared with Gmail’s 53.60%
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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
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.
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.
the key here is growth. Google is kicking yahoos ass.
Don’t forget about Google apps. Just as good as gmail from Google’s perspective, but with your own domain.
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”.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
This “projected growth rate” is garbage/fantasy.
wow another worthless story from Duncan who would have ever thought?
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.
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.
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.
I have an account with the 3 big providers - hotmail is my primary acccount, then yahoo and Gmail is my backup account.
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.
@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
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.
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.
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…
@19 - Andrew:
What an idea…I wonder if the Adwords TOS would prevent me from starting something like this?
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
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.
I don’t particularly like either one, but until I can figure out a better solution, I’m sticking with Gmail.
-A
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.
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.
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!
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….
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
@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.
Of Course! Gmail stinks and is limited by Gaggle!
fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
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.
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.
Lol…Ballmer’s giving a shout from Blogger to say that Google sucks. Huhh???
I read somewhere about this research, more percentage of Yahoo users are female.
Let’s check this statistic in year 2008 again…
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…
the last chart probably reveals that Duncan has only a brain of 10 years old.
good analysis. yeah, #of unique gmail visitors will soon exceed the population of earth.
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.
Egh…yahoo has a crap spam collector. Unbelievable.
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.
Yahoo sucks…spam still gets into the inbox. Gmail = no problems
I’d still rather use Gmail than Yahoo Mail
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.
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.
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.
Yahoo has free unlimited storage
Google has a “growing” storage
i pick unlimited yahoo