Hotmail 94% bigger than Gmail according to latest U.S. stats

By Tom Warren, on 12th Nov 10 8:51 pm with 2 Comments

A report from web traffic analysis service Compete, claims that Microsoft’s Hotmail webmail service is 94% than rival Gmail in the United States.

Based on unique visitors to each site, Compete says that Hotmail commands 48.5 million visitors per month and Gmail just 25 million. Yahoo’s mail service is the most popular of the three with over 72 million visiting the site each month. LiveSide, who spotted the report, notes that the webmail landscape could change shortly as rumors suggest Facebook will announce a mail service on Monday. Webmail visitor traffic has been trending down in the past year. Traffic has decreased by 11% year-on-year according to Compete.

It’s a common misconception that Gmail is the largest and most popular webmail provider. Microsoft’s Hotmail service has over 370 million active users worldwide. Around 75% of those users also use Messenger, the company’s popular instant messaging service.

Microsoft recently enabled full-session HTTPS encryption for Hotmail users. To enable HTTPS for your Hotmail Inbox, Calendar and Contacts simply go to https://account.live.com/ManageSSL. Once the feature is enabled all future connections to Hotmail will be secured over SSL.

  • Anonymous

    I didnt expect that. It seems like everyone is on Gmail these days if it isn’t with their ISP/School/Work, but it might be that Im in college.

    I hope Microsoft starts to really open up Live to everyone and hopefully Windows 8 will be nicely integrated, though not locked in, with Live.

    correction? “Hotmail webmail service is 94% [bigger] than rival Gmail in the United States.”

  • adacosta

    Microsoft needs to add back a Mail client in Windows. You don’t know the amount of heart attacks people get after upgrading to Windows 7 when they find out the OS doesn’t include one anymore and start wondering where are those years of emails. Even if its oldest version of Windows Live Mail, say Windows Live Mail 2011 before 2012 version, it would be more comforting for users.