1) Gmail consists of 91.6 million users, no3 of course behind Yahoo and MSN mail (Hotmail) which have roughly 250 million each.

2) Yahoo and MSN also tie their other services to their mail systems to get more signups. Can anyone say portal? Imagine if Google tied their search portal to their webmail. This means that mail services for these two (Yahoo and MSN) are heavily bloated. While Google does a bit of the same, it is not crammed down your throat like the other two. I have an account with both that I never use just so I can get access to other services that Yahoo and MSN have (APIs etc)

3) “Since leaving ‘by invitation only’ status in early 2007, Gmail has seen its usage rise 47%. It’s the fastest-growing online e-mail offering.” - Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY Apr 16, 2008

4) Yahoo started 1997, Hotmail 1996, and Google started nearly 7 or 8 years after these two in April 2004 (when it began the beta release). This gives Yahoo/Hotmail a huge lead. As one user already put it, no one is just going to cancel their account to use Google. They just stop using it (or in my case signed up and never used).

5) Lastly, the introduction of Gmail was one of the pioneering applications for AJAX development and increased mail storage to make it virtually unlimited. Both Yahoo and MSN both had to redesign much of their business models just to keep up.

The other four of your items I agree with, but Gmail my friend is far from a dud or done deal.

Just because Orkut is unknown in N.America, does not mean that it is a failure.

It’s been said by many. I’d far rather work in an organization that makes something happen than to spend month after month mired in analysis (or is that paralysis by analysis to use another cliche).

I don’t care if half their things flop, it’s nice to see new things and to take them for a spin.

- a fellow Canadian

Google Finance is really well done but it will probably take a while to become more popular.

Orkut was pretty much a flop until it became part of the bigger picture of OpenSocial. In the early days of OpenSocial, developers looked to Orkut as the reference implementation for OpenSocial integration.

I tried Lively and I was not impressed. The user experience was terrible.

Out of so many Google products, I really enjoyed many of them - Search, Google Maps, Reader, Picasa/Photo, Calendar, Gmail, Google Docs, in a way FeedBurner too

I don’t know why Yahoo Finance is much ahead, because personally I liked Google Finance better.

I’m very happy with the Google services I do use - search, Reader, Maps, Gmail, Blogger and even Google Finance to some extent - and will at least try anything they put out. I forgot about Orkut, though I did once sign up. C’est la vie.