Gmail Becomes Fourth Most Popular Email Service
By Anna Johnson on January 17th, 2009TechCrunch reports that Google is now the fourth most popular web based email service in the United States, after Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, and Windows Live Hotmail.
While member numbers are unknown, comScore estimates that unique visitors to Gmail grew 43 percent to reach 29.6 million in 2008, whereas visitors to market leader, Yahoo Mail, grew 11 percent to reach 91.9 million.
Meanwhile, AOL Mail had 46.6 million unique visitors in 2008, while Hotmail visitors actually dropped by 5 percent to reach 43.5 million.
TechCrunch estimates that, at its current growth rate, Gmail could overtake AOL and Hotmail within the next two years.
Yahoo Mail, however, won’t be so easy to beat. Although it grew by only 11 percent last year, such growth represented an impressive 9.4 million new members.
