Empirically: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=gmail%20slow&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=gmail%20slow&cm... Statistically: http://www

Empirically: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=gmail%20slow&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=gmail%20slow&cm... Statistically: http://www.google.com/trends?q=gmail+slow http://www.google.com/trends?q=gmail+slow Personally: browsing from London, UK, mail.google.com resolves to 66.249.92.83 (New york - NY), speed is inversely correlating with standard net usage (extremely slow at day, somewhat faster in the night). Currently, (1am, GMT+0), measured by stopwatch: (they make you code faster :P ) login: 3 sec (firebug says the last asset has finished loading 8 sec in) search: 8 sec search within label: 3 sec which is by my experience the fastest I've seen it for months. Furthermore, performance does NOT change with the ?labs=0 param, albeit it becomes fast again (~1.5 second searches) in basic HTML mode. Try that before considering switching to a desktop client. This is by no means within acceptable bounds. At this point in technology, there is no reason whatsoever for any e-mail provider not to perform at sub-second action level. What's even less acceptable, is Google's approach of sorting resolution by descending popularity. If hell-raising becomes a necessary pre-requirement of sorting this out, we ought to raise hell collectively. Sort that.