I think he meant behind in terms of number of users. Gmail is third, if I remember correctly (after Yahoo and Hotmail)

Everyone I know has a hotmail account. It's everyone's throwaway-give-to-spammers account. Those same people have all slowly migrated to using their Gmail address for their most important emails. So if you look only at number of users, Gmail might be behind. But if you were to know the number of active users, I would guess Gmail is way ahead.

Why guess? :)

http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/metrics/email-statist...

If you're inclined to believe what the companies say about its own services.

Heh, I think it has something to do with where you are. I don't know a single person with a hotmail account, know 2 with a yahoo account, and everyone else has a gmail account. (So, what? 100+:2:0?)

Gmail accounts are way better for throwaway-give-to-spammers. I forward all mail to myself and autolabel, mark as read, archive.

Works great, I check the label when I need to find a registration email.