How does Yahoo / Gmail / Hotmail etc make their money?

If they are free mail and / or web sites, how do they make their money and that too in so many millions?
How does Yahoo / Gmail / Hotmail etc make their money?
GMail, YahooMail and HotMail offer free service its registered users





but they make money from Advertising





Each time you login to these email accounts, you will see a lot of advertisements in the right side and the top bar of the page. Advertisers pay money to show their ads on these pages.





By an estimate, GMail (Google Mail) shows more than 20 million ads each day.





If advertisers pay only $0.05 for impression of their ad, GMail is generating a revenue of $200,000 each day.





That is $200,000 X 365 days = $73 million per annum.





(but it is just an estimate, they might be earning more than this or less than this).





:-)
Reply:Advertising! Don't you notice the advertising on the tops and sides of their websites? Yahoo! is rife with it!





MSN "home" pages and "spaces" can't be had without an ad and you can't have their free email without seeing an ad when you logon.





Anytime you do a Google search, among the first results at the top, and down the right side, are ads. Plus: through their Adwords program, companies pay to be higher in the search results, and pay to show up in those little squares of advertising you see on some web pages. Google takes a cut from that, you may be sure.
Reply:Advertisments....ever notice how the entire web page is one big commercial??????????? Cars/Gadgets/otherweb sites.
Reply:advertisements i guess