Yahoo Mail still king as Gmail lurks

Yahoo is still king of the e-mail market as of June 2009, but Gmail has the most momentum.

(Credit: ComScore Media Metrix)

Google's Gmail is the fastest-growing e-mail service on the planet, but it has a way to go to catch Yahoo's still-growing market share.

ComScore's latest figures for the e-mail market show Yahoo added almost 20 million users last year, growing its share of the market by 22 percent from 87.2 million users to 106.2 million users in June. Only Gmail grew faster--a 46-percent clip--but just 36.9 million people are currently using Gmail. Microsoft's Hotmail is the second-most widely used e-mail with 47.1 million users, up 3 percent from last year.

Some outlets, such as TechCrunch, zeroed in on Google's performance, noting that it has now surpassed Web 1.0 stalwart AOL's steadily falling share of the e-mail market. Others, such as Daring Fireball, noted that Google has better mindshare among the digerati than Yahoo or Hotmail.

But Yahoo, currently rebranding itself around content and services after dumping its search business on Microsoft, should be thrilled at 22 percent growth starting from such a large number. Now that Yahoo will be dependent on attracting eyeballs to its vast network of Web content, pushing that content to those logging into Yahoo to check their e-mail becomes extremely important.

Google has had to make some changes as Gmail has grown larger, tweaking the "labels" sorting structure it uses inside Gmail to behave more like the traditional folder-based organization used by other e-mail services. Still, there's no doubt that Gmail has breathed new life into the original killer application for the Internet since it made its debut five years ago, and Yahoo Mail will have to make sure to stay on top of evolving usage patterns to maintain its edge.

[davidwarren]

and of course 40% of those yahoo addresses are spammers it seems...

[brienza1975]

Exactly......I'm constantly getting those stupid Nigerian advance fee scams with Yahoo e-mail addresses. And deleting them of course.

[myles taylor]

Yea, I wonder how many of those users translate into actual people. I work at a computer store and when checking in machines get email addresses. Granted, these are just Mac users and maybe Mac users are more likely to use Gmail than Yahoo? (I don't know why that would be) At any rate, I'd say that Gmail is used by over 50% of the people I check in and the rest seem to be split between other providers. Yahoo on top, Hotmail and AOL coming up very rarely; usually with older people. I hardly ever see a young person with anything other than Gmail, although when I do, it's usually Yahoo.

[stockyjoe]

I dont know what you guys are talking about. I never stopped using yahoo mail because I preferred it and the new version is outstanding much better then gmail and I never get tons of un-needed spam. Beleive me I still love Google search, I love Google maps but gmail never did it for me. Not everything Google is gold.

[ngngokkiu]

I've stopped using Yahoo mail for a long time, then all of a sudden my friends said they received spam messages from my yahoo account. I was surprised because I haven't logged in to Yahoo for at least a year. How could this happen?

I went to Yahoo mail support, which directed me to AT&T, because I used AT&T internet service and the two accounts were linked. So, I contacted AT&T support (live chat), who asked me, "did you give out your password?" I said no. "Did you log in your account?" I said no. Then, being smart as she is, she told me "then you must have sent those messages and forgot about it."

Needless to say I was furious. I was telling her there was something wrong with their servers if spam messages can be sent out from an inactive account. Then she said, we do not have the resources to handle this inquiry at this level. Please call our technical support hotline.

Wow... genius.

[The_happy_switcher]

Yahoo mail stinks. Gmail is so much better.

[windooor7]

1 First God made heaven & earth 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. 3 And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. 6 and on and on AND ON. As you can see, till today. no major changes .so the day yahoo makes that major change, in their email system. the day they loss their spot. most folk with yahoo mail are from wayback then. and a major change in how they CALL,RETRIVE their email. will send the confused mailers spinnING or the way to g mail looking for answers the same mistake microsoft made when they introduced all this so called live this and that.

[csoccer1]

@ windooor7
What drugs are you on?

[santuccie]

Could be mushrooms.

[censorshipblows]

Yahoo! Mail sucks. Noobs, please stay on Yahoo!, we don't need you over here on Gmail.

[monkeyfun14]

What does it matter if they switch to Gmail? How does that effect your experience?

[jaguar717]

He'll feel less special when his clique has 500 million users instead of just 400 million.

[Mikeybabes]

Erm censorship, you're the noob. I've had my Yahoo mail account for close to 13 years. When we talk about front runners of web-based email that are still going strong we are talking about Yahoo and then MSN.
It was only much later when Gmail broke on the scene offering a then unheard of 1GB of mail storage to pull in the users.
Today I have an account on all 3 of the major providers. I get by fine on ALL of them.

[stockyjoe]

Ahh the ignorance of youth.

[sharmajunior]

Yahoo mail does suck, lack of innovation is one reason.

Deleting my old emails is another reason. No way to use POP to download your messages to your computer is annoying enough not to pay for the service. Hotmail and gmail have it for free.

[wanorris]

sharma,

Lack of innovation?

Yahoo Mail has *tons* of features GMail doesn't -- two that come to mind immediiately are multiple tabs for open emails, and a preview pane.

Since adopting it shortly after it was made available, I think my Yahoo Mail account is now in it's 5th Presidential term, and it still works great.

If, by claiming Yahoo Mail lacks innovation, you simply mean that it hasn't copied all of GMail's features exactly, perhaps you need to review your understanding of what "innovation" means.

[Urza9814]

...people still use Yahoo? Wow. That is soo....90s.

[MYN2007]

I know, it's just like @msn.com (I don't mean the newer hotmail domain name, I don't see a difference. It's just they haven't offered @msn.com in a long time!)

[stockyjoe]

lol So 90's what? I cant believe the fanboyism for Gmail. It reminds me of fanatical firefox fans. Yahoo's new email UI is far more robust then Gmail. Seriously have you tried it since 1990? It actually makes Gmail seem very 1990. Its UI is actually very impressive when you consider its a browser based app. It works like any installked client side mail application in a browser. It gmail that's static.

[cougar888]

@stockyjoe

I haven't used yahoo's since then. I read your post, so I was curious to sign up (besides I needed a new spam account so I don't have to give out my good one). The interface is definitely nice. It reminds me of outlook or Thunderbird. That being said, I do have some complaints. My first complaint is that it is slower than a dog. I have gmail and yahoo mail open right next to each other and gmail loads and refreshes about 10 times quicker. My second complaint is about archiving. Once I got a taste of archiving I can't go back. I understand that you can create a folder and then dump everything in there to be searched, but I like the interface that gmail supplies for that. I don't ever have to look at, create or deal with any folders. I just dump everything into a massive black hole and on the very rare occasion that I need something from it, I have Google search grabbing it out faster than I could ever search for it in an optimally organized folder hierarchy.

I did like the stationary that yahoo supplies (most of the designs were corny though). When it comes to spam, I find both gmail and yahoo about equivalent, but gmail never forces me to enter any captcha. Gmail themes are way better too.

Yahoo wins in the space department with unlimited storage, but after 5 years use I have used a little under 500MB of space. Gmail wins in the Labs department, the chat department and the tags department (face it, tags are way better than folders for organizing data).

This was my experience. I would say that yahoo is the best competition to gmail (far better than hotmail which just stinks) but it still falls short.

[csoccer1]

@stockyjoe
Have you tried google gears with Gmail? It works flawlessly and lets you view edit and compose new message all offline while still in the broswer. You can even search offline. Yahoo is pretty, especially their iPhone apps, but Yahoo! is dying. The only time you hear of Yahoo! is when someone is buying it (MS). Google has their excellent Labs program for Gmail, which also lets you choose some very nice skins. Google was always about the user choosing what they see. Yahoo just shoves a pretty mail app in its users face and says "Here, this is what you get".

[wanorris]

> ...people still use Yahoo? Wow. That is soo....90s

I know! Next people will say they're still using the same power company they had back in the 90s, or using a bank that isn't brand new.

People are so backward.

[Curtissw]

If we are going entirely off of browser access only than in my opinion flags will never replace folders.

[JustMe222]

Gmail has done a perfect job so far at filtering spam. I simply don't get any at all.
With My Yahoo account, far too much junk gets to my Inbox and I no longer use Yahoo mail.

I don't really need or use all the features of Gmail or Yahoo, I just an effective e-mail service and gmail works much better.

Hotmail is the worst, I'm really surprised so many people have stuck with it.

[mahurshi]

I seldom get spam in my Yahoo inbox. I think it depends on how active you are in reporting spam on the site. If you are very active for a few days, you will rarely see some creep in to your inbox. I rarely see spam in my gmail inbox as well, but that's because I actively report spam on gmail as well.

[goodspeed8701]

Liar... If yahoo is better than hotmail in your perspective then you haven't use hotmail so please don't comment on what you know nothing bout.

[xilonic]

I wish you were correct, but I do get spam in my Gmail, albeit less that Yahoo.

[monkeyfun14]

Want to know an easy way to not get spam? Treat email like a phone number don't just give it out to anyone.

[ssejhill]

goodspeed ... "If yahoo is better than hotmail in your perspective then you haven't use hotmail so please don't comment on what you know nothing bout."

I have accounts with all three. YAHOO is still the cleanest and easiest to use. Reporting "spam" and "junk" definitely helps the filters do their job in both YAHOO and GMAIL. In HOTMAIL, the reporting and flagging email as "junk" and/or "spam" does absolutely nothing. HOTMAIL's entire email experience pales in comparison to the either YAHOO or GMAIL.

[rbrown653]

I have hotmail and I love it. Plus it comes with skydrive, can get you access to live mesh and more. Plus I use Windows live mail (which blocks 99.99999999999999% of all my spam)

[stockyjoe]

I never get excessive spam with yahoo. Same with gmail. They both work well with spam. You guys need to come up with a better reason why Yahoo is supposedly inferior to gmail.

[Akiba]

Spam is really hit or miss. Everyone tries to swear by a service. I get more spam in my Gmail account (~50/day) by far which is strange because I rarely give the address out and never use it to log into websites. I use my yahoo and hotmail accounts for logging into websites. Years ago hotmail had the worst spam problem but now I rarely ever get spam from them and when I due its usually a false positive.

I think gmail is a far better service than hotmail or yahoo but I can see why everyone doesn't use it. For non-power users hotmail and yahoo are just fine and the interfaces although less powerful are simpler. For many casual users its really not a big deal. Most users don't organize their mail, use IMAP etc.

Whenever I'm in Japan it seems like everyone uses hotmail or yahoo, but most of them are using it on their cell phones (not usually smart phones) and the don't benefit as much from gmail as they already get push mail with every phone. The webmail accounts are mainly used for mail that they don't need to check so frequently. Also you have to consider the services that are tied in. Gmail is tied into all kinds of apps but most of them aren't social and the ones that are haven't caught on so well. Live messenger and Yahoo messenger have far more use than Google Chat especially outside of the US and this contributes to marketshare.

[szettervall]

I would say yahoo has the momentum as they added 19million compared to 11million for gmail.

[jusben1369]

I agree on the SPAM comment. I actually DON'T like a lot of key elements about GMAIL but it's lack of banner ads and SPAM 99.999% catch rate keep me on it as my primary non work email address.

I think the most interesting story here though is really how the ISP/Cable providers email accounts are all shrinking into the netherland.

[cnedd]

I've had the same Yahoo address for 11 years and I have no motivation to change. I use it heavily and , though it had bugs in the beginning, Yahoo Beta is running quite smoothly.

[stockyjoe]

Im the same. There was never really any compelling reason to make me switch. The new Yahoo email and all the YUI stuff is VERY impressive. I like it a lot.

[HlLLARY CLITON]

As a long time Yahoo email user its been very poor the last year or so...Yahoo needs to get its groove back

[Rod Roddy]

What kind of person gets into passionate discussions about email? Email is email, is email.

[zmjman08]

umm... we're talking about the service you use to access email, not the emails themselves.

Duh.

[Seaspray0]

@zmjman08. SMTP and POP3, unlike the masses that use HTTP. To each their own.

[Rod Roddy]

@zmjman08 you forced me into a passionate discussion about email. Ok, "the service you use to access email" whether it be Yahoo, Google, Hotmail, or Bob's email-o-rama really doesn't matter--they are all the same at the end of the day. Furthermore, I answered my own question and now I know what type of person gets into passionate discussions about email.

[georgewsu]

I like Gmail, but I still can't use it for all of my e-mail needs, so I still use Yahoo Mail as well.

The main thing holding me back is the inability to detach messages in conversation threading (ideally there would be the option to disable threading altogether):
http://getsatisfaction.com/google/topics/why_cant_i_turn_off_conversation_threading_in_gmail_its_fatal_for_my_business

Just because messages come from the same sender, and have the same subject, doesn't mean they have anything to do with each other. The official workaround suggested by Google is to use Thunderbird. Lol! Please vote and comment on this page if you want this feature too.

Other basic features missing in Gmail are:
-ability to sort on anything other than created date
-display the size of a message

[talking poo]

Thank you. Someone else feels my pain regarding sorting in Gmail. That's a huge reason why i'm with Yahoo. Plus i love Yahoo's tabs.

[xman95]

I agree!!!!
Gmail is good, but it doesn't solve all needs. And thus I also continue to use Yahoo.
Secondly, I really don't care for Google's layout....

Finally, I don't really trust Google and their advertising agenda with scanning your emails. So it will remain my secondary email account.

[Lennron]

Not to mention that Gmail looks like Yahoo and Hotmail's little brother that rides the small bus to school.

[Brent212]

Another basic feature that gmail is missing is the ability to NOT indent quoted text in replies. I f**king hate that this whole concept of indenting sh*t caught on. Now you get emails with 20 ">"s and lines broken up all over the place. The only reason I use gmail is because I like the ability to attach multiple labels to a single email and the search feature in the web interface seems to work great. Too bad I have to use a third party client, because of that lame indenting sh*t in the web interface.

[Seaspray0]

I agree with you, georgewsu.

[stockyjoe]

You got to admit, Yahoo's new email interface is slick as hell. Its basically like using a full out client based mail application.

[TV James]

@xman - what do you mean? Yahoo! scans my emails. And inserts their own hyperlinks into emails.

I only use my Yahoo! mail account for two things:
(1) To test out new email marketing campaigns I'm working on to make sure they render correctly. And what do I see? Injected hyperlinks from Yahoo! into my emails, containing my competitor's brands and offers. That's just wrong.

(2) To delete SPAM. It does catch a lot of spam (about 800 a month) but it also misses another 10-20 pieces. And I never give out my yahoo! address.

The thing I love most about my gmail account is that I can give out a distinct and unique email address everywhere I go and it all rolls back into the one account. But I can still see where the email was sent, so I can quickly tell if anyone's given away or sold my email address (hasn't happened yet) and then can quickly filter out that To: address.

[iwarrior-poet]

I have been very happy with Gmail for quite some time. The only thing that would make me happier would be more functionality with the 'Contacts'.

[pocketkk]

Previous posts about the spam filtering are correct. Gmail is much much better than Yahoo but I have to use both because I've had the Yahoo address for 10+ years. In order to combat the spam on my yahoo account I just forward all Yahoo mail to my Gmail account. It cut out virtually all spam.

[goodspeed8701]

I like gmail but I hardly use it. Yahoo has got me angry as it can't filter spam from my box. I steal use yahoo for registering on free sites like hosting and other site I don't trust. I am using live mail with windows live mail application which is so good. plus all the services live offers. Spaces, live sync etc. So far i prefer live mail to any email services out there. And livemail is 99.9% spam free.

[gjbloom]

It's especially amazing to me, since the search feature on Yahoo! mail has been broken for several months now.

[wanorris]

Not for me.

[ghostfear]

I love Yahoo Email, much better than the stupid gmail. Gmail seems so chaotic. I have a gmail account for secondary use. Only if yahoo can improve their calendar to work with today's cellphone better. can't sync with any nokia device.

[eltoro2827]

gmail sucks...why would i want my mail scanned and bothered with ads.

[advnc3]

i disagree, there are a lot more slow flash ads on yahoo and an email scanning service is standard with all net email systems, and you can bypass that, Gmail's interface is far simpler, faster and streamlined imo

[lmanlo09]

I like Yahoo Mail over Gmail because of it's interface, it is easier and faster to read my mail than gmail. I like to see what email I will see next before I click on it. I hate clicking Go back to inbox, it's more mouse movements than using Yahoo. Like the easiness of yahoo. If gmail had an option to show mail without needing to open it, that would be better. It makes me think that Gmail is using the old fashion view of email that it used to be. Yahoo Mail is better, for spam, I haven't received any on my email for a long time and I use Yahoo Mail as my default email provider. I also like that you can chat and text.

[gsmiller88]

I'm a fan of AOL Mail. C'mon, free POP and IMAP access, what could be better? Sure the web interface stinks, but I manage my email account through Apple Mail 99.98% of the time anyway.

[ZetaZeta_]

Every email service needs POP/IMAP access. Yahoo! will keep their market share even longer if they offer it with their free accounts.

[ikramerica--2008]

Exactly. Yahoo! is destroying themselves by offering "free" webmail only, and forcing people to pay for POP, not even offering IMAP.

Gmail offers free IMAP.

No contest. I personally don't do Y or G, but recommend G to people who want a new free client. Or better, pay for a better service where you have privacy and control. But some people are cheep.