Tug of war on the web

Email service providers try newer ways to get more users from competitors.

Around three years before, the technology world witnessed the restart of a battle between internet browsers. Google had launched its Chrome browser and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) was fighting back. Mozilla’s Firefox was steadily finding favour with users, while other browsers like Opera (very popular on cellphones) and Safari (for Apple computers especially) stood their own in their respective arenas.

IE has retained its lead over the years but the battle has taken its toll, with the gap between Firefox and itself having reduced considerably.

A similar battle appears to be warming up in the email arena. Gmail recently took a dig at the competition (read Microsoft) with an exhortation on the Gmail homepage: ‘Save your friends from outdated email.’

“Do you still have that one friend who hasn’t made the switch to Gmail? It’s time to take a stand and stage an email intervention (Google has also created a site with the name emailintervention.com),” exhorts a suited man who calls himself an ‘intervention specialist’. At his side are balloons, representing one among them who “still sends you email from an an embarrassingly outdated address...that should be laid to rest”.

Is the competition taking it lying down? A spoof video (ironically on Google property — youtube.com/watch?v=OrkAuwao FGg& feature=player_embedded#at=26) pokes fun at Gmail. Called ‘Gmail Man’, it was first reported by ZDNet, which got a copy from an attendee at the annual Microsoft Global Exchange sales conference. Microsoft, however, hasn't commented on whether it has anything to do with the video, which is currently making merry on the web.

The video begins with a caption: ‘The following scene represents the opposite experience of Office 365 (a Microsoft product).’ There's the ‘Gmail Man’, who tells a passer-by (a young girl) why he's shuffling (rather, snooping) through (snail) mails, apparently to match ads. Later, he strolls into a fictional office where he serves up ads the recipient says are wildly inaccurate, despite the fact that he has been ferreting ‘keywords’ from the mail. The purpose of the video appears to be to push Microsoft’s Office 365 product, which launched out of beta a month before.

WHO HAS WHAT
According to comScore (August 2010 data) Windows Live Hotmail (acquired from India’s Sabeer Bhatia and now known as ‘Windows Live Mail’) is the world’s largest web-based email service, with nearly 364 million users. Second and third are Yahoo! Mail (280 million) and Gmail (191 million). However, hitwise data indicate that as of March this year, the most popular email websites (based on US Internet usage and in descending order of popularity) in the US, ranked by visits, comprise Yahoo! Mail (with 2.9 per cent visit share) followed by Gmail (1.13 per cent) and Windows Live Mail (0.94 per cent).

In India, the scene is different. ComScore, for instance, pegs Gmail’s market penetration in India at 62 per cent. Brazil comes second at 41 per cent and the US is third with 29 per cent. During the week ending January 1, 2011, Google (google.co.in) was the most visited website in India, representing 11.13 per cent of all Indian internet visits — equivalent to 1 in every 10, according to hitwise data. Second and fourth position were retained by the Google network site (google.com) and Gmail (4.92 per cent visit share). Yahoo! Mail India was ranked seventh, with 2.21 per cent visit share.

Meanwhile, even Microsoft and Yahoo! have been sprucing their email services. Hotmail, for instance, was rebranded Microsoft Live Mail and has seen many updates since. And, this April, Yahoo! invited users to upgrade their email boxes: “...In the coming months, we will ask you to upgrade to the newest version of Yahoo! Mail for your account ldmonte@yahoo.com. All Yahoo! Mail customers will be asked to upgrade. But you don’t have to wait, you can have the newest Yahoo! Mail today.”

Even storage has proved to be a weapon in the fight for user mindshare. While Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google battled, users have benefitted from increased space. Gmail, for instance, raised the storage bar and currently provides more than 7 GB of free storage. Users can rent additional storage for a price. Microsoft had to follow by increasing space for some users from 2 MB to 25 MB, with 250 MB after 30 days, and 2 GB for Hotmail Plus accounts. In late April 2005, Yahoo! Mail storage increased to 1 GB. It began providing “unlimited” storage to all its users in May 2007.