Gmail vs Hotmail: Why and how did Hotmail and Microsoft lose market share to Gmail?

Microsoft’s Hotmail, which has now been merged merged with Microsoft’s other email service Outlook, is struggling to match up to Gmail, which is currently steaming ahead in popularity as the favourite email provider.

Both personal and company interests have incorporated Gmail into their correspondences, and Hotmail and Outlook have taken a back seat.

Gmail is currently enoying over one billion users, having passed the benchmark in 2016, while Outlook is residing on 400million.

As hotmail was once the most popular, there is clearly something Google is doing differently that warrants such a change in opinion.

Why did Hotmail lose market share to Gmail?

Both Gmail and Hotmail are free to use services, allowing people to create an account with no hidden costs or future subscriptions.

The key to understanding why Gmail so quickly gained the high ground could lie in the way the two companies monetise their products.

Microsoft had been building their own platform based on allowing advertments into their email services, while Gmail has not.

The advertisements on Hotmail meant that Microsoft could gain ‘clicks’, generating advertising revenue.

Google, on the other hand, learned from the experience and uses emails personalise advertisments on its other products, rather than relying on their single email platform to generate income individually.

Google collects data from emails on a Gmail account before displaying personalised adverts on their search engine.

This ultimately means that people are clicking much more on the adverts that appear to them.

Is Gmail better than Hotmail?

In terms of features, Gmail and Microsoft Outlook are very different beasts, with Outlook being more of a straight-laced email server, and Google pairing more features.

From the inbox, Gmail users can access many of Google’s in-house apps, making the experience seem more like an all-in-one office.

Included in the menu are the account and mail options, but also with Google’s free-to-use office apps.

These include Google Drive, Sheets, Slides and Docs, and means documents of any kind can be opened from this menu and transferred between devices.

Google Drive is potentially the most useful among the given apps, as it enables storing data over a cloud-like server which lets you transfer files easily.

Microsoft on the other hand, does have cloud storage too, but the associated apps aren’t nearly as well integrated.

All in all, its unsurprising that so many people have gravitated towards Gmail as it continues to develop impressive new additions that make it infinitely easier to use.