On February 14, 2007 Google's Gmail opened up access to anyone worldwide. Previously Gmail, which is still in beta, was only available by invitation from another Gmail user. The market share of US visits to Gmail increased by 17% from February 2007 to April 2007, and was up 30% year over year, from April 2006 to April 2007. Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail are still by far the dominant web-based email services: their market share of visits was respectively 13x and 6x greater than Gmail in April 2007.

Users of Gmail are a different breed than the average Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail users, which closely resemble the online population in terms of age and socioeconomic status. Gmail users are much more likely to be young, high income, and in the early adopter segments. For the four weeks ending 4/28/07, 54% of visits to Gmail were from users between 18 and 34, compared to 42% for Yahoo! Mail and 44% for Hotmail. 18% of Gmail's visits were from those with average annual household incomes between $100,000 and $149,999, compared to 15% from Hotmail and 13% for Yahoo! Mail.

Claritas PRIZM NE social group data shows Gmail's strength in what are typically early adopter groups, like Urban Uptown (U1), Elite Suburbs (S1) and the Affluentials (S2).