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Gmail finally overtakes Hotmail as world's top email service

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On November 1, 2012, 9:30 AM

Internet analytics firm comScore is putting an end to any disputes about Gmail's dominance in the webmail market -- in case you were keeping scores. According to their traffic data for October, Google’s email service has finally overtaken Hotmail with 287.9 million unique worldwide visitors during the month versus 286.2 million for Hotmail.

Google had already claimed the top spot by its own count of over 425 million active users in June 2012, up from 350 million in January. However, these numbers wildly differed from the 289 million reported by comScore at the time. It’s worth noting the research firm doesn’t track mobile usage.

Yahoo Mail ranked third with 281.7 million active users during October. Despite its position in the global market, the latter is still king in the US, with 76.7 million active users versus 69.1 million for Gmail and 35.5 million for Hotmail.

The number of unique visitors to all three email providers is down overall, which GigaOm speculates could be due to the recent introduction of Microsoft’s Outlook and AOL’s (still in closed beta) Alto.

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User Comments: 12

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  1. Well that didn't take long.

  2. I'm not surprised. Gmail has been the go-to service for a while. Microsoft's relaunched Outlook.com is pretty great, but the company hasn't done anything to market it.

  3. Every Android has a mandatory GMail account for using the market place and hotmail is on the way out, being replaced by the new Outllook platform.

    So, no surprise really.

    GMail is fairly naff though. I have one for my tablet but never look at it.

  4. I did not know it even existed anymore.

  5. Every Android has a mandatory GMail account for using the market place and hotmail is on the way out, being replaced by the new Outllook platform.

    So, no surprise really.

    GMail is fairly naff though. I have one for my tablet but never look at it.

    This.

    However

    Verizon forced me to make a gmail account, I still have it and like it way more then yahoo, its nice and simple, no ads slamming my face. Not to say there is anything wrong with hotmail.

  6. People are still using HotMail?

  7. I only keep a hotmail account to act as a contact account should my gmail become compromised.

    In all honesty, hotmail seems to mark a lot of legitimate email as spam.

  8. I prefer my Gmail over Hotmail. I only seem to get spam through my Hotmail account.

  9. People are still using HotMail?

    Windows Live Messenger is legit :|

    I think it lets you use other emails to register though. I seen numerous logins from people using gmail accounts among other that weren't yahoo or windows live emails.

  10. I prefer my Gmail over Hotmail. I only seem to get spam through my Hotmail account.

    Why don't you do what I did in like 2004 switch your spam filter on in hotmail and only emails that are on your approved list get in. The rest go into the junk mail filter!

  11. Yahoo mail is just bad.

  12. Oh my, just look at that chart

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