Google’s Gmail may have become the world’s third most email service, just a few months back, but in India it has acquired the top spot already dislodging Yahoo as the top service provider.  This has ended the 10-year reign of Yahoo Mail as India’s most popular email service.

ViziSense, an Internet user measurement agency which tracks India’s top websites on a monthly basis, reported that the number of unique users of Yahoo Mail dropped from 18.2 million in August to 16.8 million in September.

“The popularity of Google over the past few years has created a brand which today extends beyond just search and it is this brand that has helped strengthen Gmail’s usage,” said Prashant Mehta, chief operating officer of Komli Media Pvt. Ltd, an Internet ad agency that owns ViziSense.

Google says features tailored to the needs of Indian users gave it an edge. “The launch of Gmail in eight Indian languages was a positive step in this direction,” said Vinay Goel, head of products, Google India. Yahoo declined to comment on the ranking.

Sanjay Tiwari, director of online research company JuxtConsult Pvt. Ltd, says Yahoo’s lowered usage may partly be a result of the company’s strategy to narrow its focus to a few key areas such as music and social media and to make its website less cluttered.

Source : livemint.com

According to September data from vizisense.com for Gmail.com, the Maharashtra, followed by Delhi brings the maximum traffic to Gmail, where states are concerned. Where as Delhi top’s the list of Cities,

Source: vizisense.com

One more factor that may be contributing to this growth of Gmail should be the rise of internet site Orkut and other Google applications, which require you to preferably have a Gmail id. But leaving all these factors aside, Gmail is a really nice and easy to use email site, which make it really popular by itself.