Gmail seems to have become the largest email service.

The audience of the Gmail service has exceeded 425 million active users per month, according to Google internal statistics. This is more than any known figures about the audience of the former leader in this market, Microsoft Hotmail.

The latest information on the number of Hotmail users dates back to July 2011 , when they announced an audience of 360 million. Now Microsoft refuses to report internal statistics, citing figures from ComScore, which estimates Hotmail's audience at 325 million people in May 2012.

Thus, it is possible with a large degree of confidence to congratulate Gmail on the victory.

For many years, the largest mail services on the Internet were Hotmail and Yahoo Mail: the first was founded in 1996, the second in 1997. They provided users with one or two megabytes of free storage space for mail until Gmail appeared on April 1, 2004, and promised a whole gigabyte to everyone. Everyone thought it was an April Fool's joke.
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At that moment, the fate of competitors was sealed. Now Gmail came out on top, but continues to grow rapidly: from January to June, the monthly audience has grown from 350 to 425 million, according to Google internal statistics.

ComScore statistics are highly at odds with internal company numbers, since they are based on telephone user surveys and online questionnaires. According to comScore for May 2012, the leader was Hotmail (325 million), Yahoo Mail was second (298 million), and Gmail (289 million) was third. However, the reliability of these figures is very doubtful.

On the other hand, Google’s internal statistics show the number of active accounts , not the actual audience, so it can also be slightly “blown out”.