Gmail imports emails and contacts, killing another excuse for Hotmail

May 13, 2009 | Anthony Ha | Comments | |

I don’t know anyone who still uses Yahoo Mail or Microsoft’s Hotmail for their webmail, but I realize that there are still plenty of you out there. In fact, according to data from comScore , there are far more Yahoo users and Hotmail users than there are Gmail users (although Hotmail numbers are falling while Yahoo and Gmail numbers continue to rise). Maybe a Gmail junkie like me is a wee bit biased, but it seems that there’s only one explanation — inertia. You guys have your Hotmail accounts, already full of emails and contacts, so why switch? Well, Google just eliminated that excuse.

It’s now possible to import all of your emails and contacts into Gmail from Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, and other webmail services with just the push of a button. Basically, it means you can move over to Gmail and then carry on your correspondence with barely a hiccup — no maintaining two accounts, no searching for old emails, no rebuilding your list of contacts. This feature also facilitates a "trial period" of sorts, by continuing to pull emails from your old account for 30 days. (Yesterday, Google announced a similar importing ability for its new standalone contacts application.)

This feature is available in all new Gmail accounts and is being gradually rolled out to old ones. In his blog post , Gmail Engineer Chad Parry said it finally convinced his wife to switch over — and, hey, if someone had been able to resist the allure of Gmail despite the fact that her husband worked on the product, her resistance must have been strong indeed. I suppose the last bit of inertia is the fact that you’d have to tell everyone you have a new email address — but did you really want people to know you had a Hotmail account anyway?

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • Alex
    The only reason I still use hotmail is because I can't get my email out of it, or get it to forward to my gmail. You're totally locked in. All of the tools I've tried just do not work, especially with a Mac. Anyone got any suggestions?
  • Alex
    Yup, this doesn't seem to work either:

    "There was a problem connecting to mail.hotmail.com. Please contact Microsoft's support team for more information on POP access."
  • Did you ever figure out what happened here? Had they not rolled out the new import feature to your account yet?
  • Gibson Tang
    I have abandoned Hotmail and Y! mail for years now as their spam filter is next to worthless. GMail's spam filter on the other hand, is working great for me.
  • John
    I've heard that gmail targets their ads to the contents of your email.
    Thats too spooky for me.

    But if I could Pop my Hotmail to Yahoo I'd do it in a heartbeat.
  • Mark
    I still use Yahoo for my primary mail. I have Hotmail, which I rarely use; actually have it only because Yahoo required an alternate email address. I have Gmail and have tried hard to like it. I don't like the interface and function, and I find all those relevant ads annoying. (I know, I'm supposed to find them helpful).
  • Your Boss
    You people are ridiculous! who cares, your gonna get junk mail and your gonna get spam from putting your name out there...that's what the junk and spam folders are for idiots. Don't listen to these people whoever reads these. You have an email account...your gonna get junk, don't be lazy...just delete it! If you don't know it, don't freekin open it. Its a free e-mail account your not paying for it so who cares if you get junk...you get junk mail in your house mail everyday...I don't see you complaining about that now...or are you people to lazy for that to...haha I bet your to lazy to even throw that away. I've been using Hotmail for years and haven't had a problem yet..no viruses or anything...in fact just to even open a regular e-mail not in the junk or spam folder it warns you before if you don't know the user or sender it might not be safe to open in a big yellow screen. I for one will stand up for Hotmail, just because you people see something new, all of you are like, ooh! something new! I gotta get that! haha have fun tards!
  • Anonymous
    I'd love to use Gmail, but there are no addresses available for me. For now, I'm sticking to live.ca until the email with my name is freed up.
  • I got invited pretty early on, but I got screwed out of anthonyha@gmail because there is supposedly an Anthony Ha working at Google.
  • Papa Charlie
    I love Hotmail and have been using it as my primary email address for a long time. I have a Gmail and Yahoo account, but prefer Hotmail's interface. On my email account I receive non-stop spam and its not that I have the problem, even my mother who barely uses the internet, has a Gmail account which is spammed often. My vote goes to Hotmail.
  • Esteban
    I use hotmail as my "junk mail address" to give out whenever registering to sites that will eventually send you spam. For friends and contacts I'm all up for gmail, great filters and also it's the only one that can really sync (thanks to free IMAP) with my iPhone, iMac (home) and Ubuntu laptop (for uni). I gotta hand it to google, gmail is great and it just keeps getting better.
  • Mark
    I moved to email from COMCAST figuring I will move in the next 1-3 years, and used my three initials and myy of birth so I had no problem getting a six digit unique email address for personal, and one for my business (the business name). I did find it difficult to get my name even tho it is 13-letters German and somewhat unique--less than 100 phone listings in the USA, and only a handful with my first initial, let alone my full first name and last name and other similar combinations (with dots, etc.)
  • Pes
    Yeah Google and gmail are rullez they are amazing and new functions are good!