I started to use web based Yahoo Mail from 1998. It’s not perfect (large amount of spams, sometimes it put legimitate mail to bulk folder), but it works. About 2 years ago I got the GMail account and started using it. GMail has some nice features such as it “groups” same subject emails in one mail; and better previews for photos. But recently it was a bit goofy. One thing I noticed is it did not send out mail to the receivers. I confirmed this with my friends. In both cases, it looked OK for the senders but “not OK” for receivers: the receiver will just get the “quoted” original message. Those kind of problems mainly cause some inconvenience, but it could be more serious. Because I signed up electronic bill for my cell phone using GMail, and I have not received the email (and I did not go to t-mobile site lately), I missed the deadline of bill payment. T-Mobile happily charged $5 late fee. OK, I guess I will give back a portion of the $20 I saved from Google Checkout back to T-Mobile 🙂
Seriously, a while ago I thought about moving my email service from Yahoo to GMail. But I decided to stay with Yahoo for now. Besides the problem mentioned above, GMail is not reliable in China. I guess that’s one reason people in China like Hotmail better. I believe Hotmail is faster compared to Yahoo Mail in China too.