OnlyOnce: Gmail - I Don't Get It, Part II

A Return Path employee's blog notes some interesting statistics about Google's lack of penetration with its much-talked-about Gmail free email service. Return Path offers a mail forwarding service that gives them a view of the amount and direction of free email account churn. It found that only a small number of its roughly 16 million users were joining Gmail, although the amount was increasing rapidly. The added accounts to the invitation-only beta product numbered 375 in July, 802 in August and 2,396 in September. But looking at the number of people leaving Gmail, the figures showed 741 people in September, a 3-1 ratio of subscribes to unsubscribes, indicating a high level of temporary experimentation.