Back in July Google reported Gmail has 425 million monthly active Gmail accounts. If true, that would have finally made Gmail the most popular web mail service in the world, surpassing Hotmail and Yahoo. However, at the time, Google’s numbers were not in-line with third party companies that track such statistics. Now, however, ComScore — one such third-party company — has come out with numbers showing that Gmail is indeed the most popular web e-mail service in the world.

According to ComScore, which tracks e-mail usage from home and work but does not count smartphone and tablets, globally Gmail has 287,913,000 users while Hotmail has 286,238,000 and Yahoo has 281,722,000. In the US, however, Yahoo is still king with 76,751,000 users with Gmail in second (69,124,000) and Hotmail in third (35,516,000).

It is really surprising to me that Gmail took eight years (it was originally released in 2004) to become top dog. Between e-mails from developers, dotTechies, and potential hires, I send and receive a lot of e-mails. And, if I were to roughly estimate, I would say 90% or more people I have been in contact with use Gmail. I mean, yeah, I’m sure people have multiple e-mail accounts (I have a Hotmail account, too) but who really uses anything besides Gmail? Apparently a lot of people. Go figure.

[via GigaOm]