Just eked past AOL, still behind Hotmail and Yahoo Mail in total users. But, in terms of mindshare, Gmail utterly dominates. Many of my friends — technically knowledgeable, demanding email users — use and love Gmail. None of them use Hotmail or Yahoo Mail. Raw user count is the wrong metric; Gmail has already won.

Google is like Apple in this way. It starts by taking over the premium end of a market.