Having now used gmail for several years, the main advantage with gmail compared to other webmail providers is the speed of the service. Pages load quickly and are easy to navigate. On the other hand webmail providers such as hotmail are full of java advertising and all kinds of annoying bloat. This is because advertising on gmail is text based.

Overall I would consider gmail to be superior to hotmail and yahoo mail however these days it's not just about the mail service itself but also the services that tie in with the email service. Hotmail works quite well with msn messenger. Although gmail is better, MSN messenger is the main reason I still use hotmail as my main email service. On the other hand google offers google talk which isn't as widely adopted as msn messenger. Gmail has all kinds of features which I have found extremely useful such as the ability to manage documents and photos online. Rather than emailing photos I simply upload them to my gmail photo account and send a private URL link to friends. There's a maximum 1GB upload limit for photos and you can choose to upload them in original form without any further compression.

If you just need an online mail service I highly recommend gmail however if like myself you like to communicate with friends occasionally over online messenger I would recommend hotmail. Unfortunately once you stick with one webmail provider it's very difficult to switch. I have emails in my hotmail inbox that go back over 10 years ago. Switching to gmail would not be an option unless I could somehow back up my old emails.