Gmail, a popular email service that was once dominating the email service market, has lost almost 12% (11.74%) of users in just 14 months. As of November 2022, Gmail’s market share has reduced to 23.51% from 35.25% in September 2021. There are around 4.3 billion email users globally and Gmail has lost almost 505 million users in the last 14 months. These users can be existing Gmail users who left the platform or new users who have just started using the email service. But whoever these users are, the concern is these people are using some other email service and not Gmail. You know there was a time when people used to believe that email means Gmail. Whether it’s for personal use or business Gmail was the first preference. But then what happened? Why is Gmail losing its market share so fast? And what impact does it have on Google? And most importantly what other email services these users are using nowadays? In this story today we’ll talk about the Gmail story, how Gmail has changed over the years, and see if is this the end of Gmail. Why is everyone leaving Gmail?
The Beginnings
To understand the current scenario, we have to go back in history to when Gmail was launched. When Gmail was launched on April Fools Day in 2004, it was taken as a joke. And the reason was that when Gmail launched, it had 1 GB of storage space which was significantly higher than its competitors like Hotmail and Yahoo. At that time Yahoo was offering 2MB of storage and Hotmail was offering 5 MB of storage. But Gmail was not a joke and it stayed there to give a hard time to other email clients. Gmail gained popularity since its launch. It offered many features that made it a preferred choice since Day 1.
Increased Popularity
The main reason for Gmail’s popularity was its user interface which was different from other email clients with a focus on search and conversation threading of emails. Grouping several messages between two or more people onto a single page along with labels (tags) provided a more flexible method of organizing emails. Another main feature of Gmail was support for HTTPS. Going forward Gmail introduced many other features for security and spam filtering. Google also increased its storage capacity and within a year it doubled the storage to 2GB in 2005 followed by 4GB in 2007. Currently, it offers 15 GB of default space which is free and after that, there is a paid plan for space of up to 2 TB. All these features gave Gmail an edge over its competition.
Now you might ask how Gmail was able to provide this much storage in 2004, and 2005. And this brings us to another factor that contributed to Gmail’s success. When Gmail was launched it was not available as a free service to everyone. It was an invite-only service. And that’s why there were no issues with scaling. This invite-only feature not only helped Gmail to provide high storage capacity, but it also brought so much attention from people who wanted to use the service but were waiting to get invited. Gmail stayed invite-only for 3 years and within that time Gmail fixed the storage concern when it was launched as a free service its market share went up very soon.
Now Gmail was popular not only for personal use but many schools, colleges, and universities were also using it. Gmail provided many other services like custom domain names, offline service on Google Chrome, Zero downtime, increased storage with a paid subscription, and 24*7 support services. Till this point, the situation was actually good as Gmail got a big market share and users got an email client with much better features than its competitors. But after some things changed with Gmail.
Forceful Adoption
Google Plus
Now things started to change after 2010 with Google’s forceful adoption. Initially, it was not a big problem for people who were already in Google’s ecosystem, but for new users, it was nothing less than a headache. And the major reason for all these problems was Google+. Many of you might not know about Google Plus. So let me tell you, Google Plus was a social media platform by Google that was launched to compete with Facebook. And the issue was that instead of creating better features, Google was trying to force people to use Google Plus. For example in 2011, if a new user wanted to create a Gmail account, Gmail was forcing them to first create a Google Plus account. It must sound irritating today. But until 2014 it stayed like this.
But this forceful adoption didn’t stop there. In 2013, Google introduced a new policy that if you want to comment on any YouTube video you should have a Google+ account. Of Course, people were against this. In fact, YouTube’s co-founder Jawed Karim also posted against the policy. But it stayed like this until 2015. Now Google Plus doesn’t exist anymore. So the source for forceful adoption is changed from Google Plus to Gmail. Google tries to connect many of its platforms through Gmail. For example, if you need to use Drive or YouTube or photos or contacts, you need to log in using a Gmail account. In some cases where it doesn’t ask you to use Gmail, you get only limited features.
Outside personal accounts
But Google is not stopping with the forceful adoption of personal accounts. They are going one step ahead with the colleges and universities. For example, if a university wants to use Google Classroom or Google Calendar, they should have a Google account. Also, every student who wants to access this information should also have a google account. In fact, there are many external sites and apps where it’s not required but you get an option to log in using a Google account. Google claims that it’s convenient for users to have their accounts linked. And though we are not sure if it’s true, we are definitely sure that it strengthens Google’s monopoly and it’s no secret that Google scans its users’ email and uses the contents to serve up ads that may – or may not – be relevant to you.
Dominance is in Danger
Gmail because of its features, high storage, and force adoption has become the biggest email client but now this dominance is fading. And to start with, the main differentiator for Gmail when it started was the storage. But to end the storage dominance Microsoft has started to give 15 GB storage only for email plus 5GB for OneDrive.
The second differentiator from Gmail was its UI. Again it is not appreciated much now as many others have better or similar UI. Though Gmail in competition with Microsoft created the Microsoft office products like Google Docs, slides, and spreadsheets and is trying to target universities and corporations with this, tying up in its G-suite. But frankly, for institutions and corporations, Microsoft has been a trusted partner for many years. Plus Microsoft Azure has played a big role there with the automatic sync on Azure. And that’s why most corporations still use Microsoft Outlook instead of Gmail.
Now the 3rd and the most important of all the reasons to end the dominance of Gmail is Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection Program. In the last few years, people were already tired of data leaks from companies like Facebook & Google. So when this protection program came from Apple, people at least had one option to save their data. As it can save you from exposing your IP and tracing your email activity. And people are appreciating this. As it’s very evident from the data itself. In September 2021, Apple mail’s market share was 50% which increased to 65% by November 2022. And as more and more people are getting aware of this, this number can increase more in the future.
Future & other options
Well, with all this analysis and data, it doesn’t mean that Gmail is dying. It’s gonna stay there. And frankly, we love it. We need Google and all its apps to surf the internet and read articles and of course, watch youtube videos. But when it comes to privacy we have alternates. And Apple is dominating that space for now. Apple has figured out its business strategy. They know very well what the end customer wants. And in this world of data, everyone needs data protection. Apple’s “Ask Not To Track” and privacy protection program is definitely paying off. But if you see actually the trend is going towards more secure options for all apps, not just Apple. For social media, we have BeReal instead of Facebook and Instagram, and for messaging we have Signal instead of WhatsApp & Messenger.
So, that’s about Gmail today. Let us know what email client you use in the comments below.