February 9, 2009 by James Oliver
Analysts are widely predicting a changing of the guard at the upper end of the email provider tree. Usage of Gmail, Google’s popular email service is growing at such a rate that, if it continues, the email service will overtake Windows Live Hotmail by the end of 2009.
Last year Gmail’s unique monthly visitors grew from 20.8 million visitors to 29.6 million. That’s an increase of 43%. During the same period, Hotmail experienced a modest fall of 5%, from 45.7 million to 43.5 million.
Clearly Gmail is still a fair way behind Hotmail in terms of users, however, it would only take Gmail’s growth rate to rise by three percent to take usage to 43 million, a hair beneath Hotmail’s current share. Since it’s Google we’re talking about here, that’s entirely possible. At the same time, if Hotmail continue their rate of decline, even at a rate slightly below what it is now, we could be looking at Gmail overtaking Hotmail by December time.
Yahoo can’t relax either. They may be sitting pretty at the moment, with 91.9 million unique visitors in December 2008 and around 11% growth. However, if Google continue to outpace them in terms of growth they could lose their place as top email provider by as early as 2011.
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