Gmail Takes Largest Webmail Service Crown 383
redletterdave writes "After several years of dominance, Microsoft's Web-based email service, Hotmail, has been unseated by Google's significantly younger webmail service, Gmail. Google announced it had about 350 million monthly active users in January; since then, that number has ballooned to 425 million."
Remember when people ran their own mail servers?
android (Score:5, Interesting)
I dunno, maybe the fact of requiring a gmail account to setup an android phone has something to do with it maybe?
Re:Maybe selection bias (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm surprised Hotmail just lost its crown. It has millions of spam accounts on there.
Either their spam detection just got better, or the spammers themselves are leaving Hotmail because no one takes Hotmail seriously anymore.
Re:android (Score:5, Interesting)
do you actually need a Gmail account to setup an Android phone?
A basic Google Account can be used to configure the phone but will fail if the user then tries to use the Android Market functionality; the Market requires a Gmail account.
There is a long, long thread on Google's "support" forum about this dating back to somewhere in 2009, but still no fix!
On a basic level the phone will work fine without any form of Google account, you just won't be able to use features such as sync or the Market. I do find the latter to be quite limiting, particularly when some vendors ( such as Amazon ) don't even provide a download of their own app from their own site but insist on directing the user to the Market. I had to ask a friend to send me a copy of the Kindle APK!
Re:How many are 'bots? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Maybe selection bias (Score:2, Interesting)
If you don't login from time to time, hotmail (and gmail for that matter) will lock and eventually delete your account.
Fun Fact: Most people don't bother to clean up their digital refuse.
So if you're looking for ways to pass the time, check and see if anyone you know has allowed their hotmail account to lapse.
Then re-register it and do a password reset on any website you think they had an account with.
Bonus points if you get hits from dating websites or livejournal.
Re:Own email server (Score:2, Interesting)
My parents like Gmail because it provides tons of space, good searching facilities, excellent spam filtering, and a built-in web-based chat/voice/video client so they can easily click two buttons and be chatting with my sister or me. Yes, it's possible to setup something similar on one's own, but it's (a) a hassle and (b) likely to be not as cleanly integrated as Gmail, which is a big turn-off for non-technical users.
My first alarm bell about Google rang when they added chat to the GMail window. I was able to quickly extinguish that problem.
The next alarm bell rang when they added Buzz, I think. I had to spend time searching and then disabling that Buzz.
Then they made yet another change - some GUI change, I think - that made me mad. I connected with POP and moved all my messages onto my own server. Since then I haven't connected to GMail over the Web even once. I'm pulling email out that is occasionally sent by someone who has my old email address, but in last months I haven't seen even one valid email coming from there. I can safely terminate the Google account now.
With regard to UI changes, this is extremely annoying. Those busybodies keep changing things for reasons unknown - I guess just because they have to do something, and this is just as good as anything else. But this bothers me because once I get used to something I see no reason to fiddle with it. I have many other things that need change, and I'm busy working on those. Leave things that work alone.
By the way, now I recall what made me so mad that I stopped using GMail completely. It was a new feature called "Also copy $someone". When I sent an email a note appeared with these words, initially suggesting that the other recipient WILL be copied on the email. Later Google was kicked so hard they had to change the words to "Suggesting to also copy $someone". This was all calculated from previous email history and it was as bat$hit crazy as it gets. I haven't sent a single email through GMail interface from that day. I simply do not want to risk emailing stuff if I am not in 100% control of who gets what. (The suggestions were all wrong, by the way.) I do not know what they are doing now because I'm done with their "free" service.