It’s bad news on AOL’s side as they have been gradually losing market share. To add to this rude fate, AOL has also fallen to the No.4 spot, which is a notch below Google’s Gmail service. According to the recent statistics revealed by ComScore show that AOL’s monthly visitors went down from 45.1 million in July 2008 to 36.4 million in July 2009, which is a 19% drop. In order to revive their fortunes and get back their popularity, AOL plans to either acquire or partner with Startups.

Brad Garlinghouse, formerly a senior Vice President at Yahoo has joint AOL as the President of Internet and Mobile Communications that includes AOL’s e-mail and instant messaging. Garlinghouse is interesting in making AIM interoperable with Facebook and Skype so that the fate of AOL could be ameliorated faster.

On the contrary, Google’s Gmail is experiencing a great traffic rate. Within July 2008 to July 2009, Gmail grew at the rate of 46%. This is a terrific growth and they might raise Windows Live Hotmail by next February should they maintain this rate. There definitely is a tough competition in the web world. It’s getting more interesting as time passes by.

Via: Gigaom\InformationWeek