After the news that Chrome has become the most used browser on the planet (with 310 million users), Gmail has surpassed Hotmail with a total of 425 Million monthly active users, according to the official blog. With that number it has surpassed Hotmail for the first time in history. We noted back in January that Gmail was at 350 Million, so the growth has been strong and steady.
A quote from TechCrunch:
It’s being used by government agencies in 45 states and 66 of the top 100 universities in the U.S. have already gone Google. Google also announced that over 5 million businesses have now “gone Google.” This, says Google, includes a number of large companies, including Roche, KLM and others.
The service began in 2004, and it has been growing ever since. Over the years, important new features have been introduced, including Priority Inbox, to help users get a handle on their email stream.
These numbers come from Google itself: comScore on the other hand notes that the number of active Gmail users is much lower:
Google has way less unique visitors and still gives the edge to Hotmail and Yahoo. ComScore’s latest numbers from May have Hotmail at No. 1 with 325 million unique visitors, Yahoo at No. 2 with 298 million users, and Gmail at No. 3 with 289 million users.
However, comScore is a competitor to Google (in the analytics field), and the above stats do not include smartphone / tablet access or internet cafe access, so the reliability of those numbers is debatable.
Congrats to Gmail on becoming no. 1 in just 8 years!
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