MBP Spotlight: google.com


First in a new series: Who hosts what mail? MBP Spotlight
is the brand new series here at Spam Resource where I’ll share ranking data for the top mailbox providers (including B2B!) based on where they fall in the top ten million domains. Some entries might have more info, some entries might have less, depending on what information I know about them and what information I can find online.

To count rankings, I took a snapshot of MX records for the top ten million domains, and then rolled them up based on the domain name hosting mail for each domain. That shows me how many domains have their inbound email hosted by hosted by “*.google.com,” “*.outlook.com,” etc.

Number 1 in the rankings: google.com

Who is this? Google

What are they? Google is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial intelligence (AI).

How much mail do they host? The domain google.com hosts mail for more than 805,888 email domains.

When looking up MX records for Google-hosted domains, here’s what you need to know:
  • If the domain (not the MX record, but the actual recipient domain) is gmail.com or googlemail.com, it’s a Gmail consumer webmail domain. There’s only two of them – there are no regional variant domains for Gmail. That second domain (googlemail.com) is a lingering byproduct of past trademark conflict issues.
  • If the domain’s MX record is “smtp.google.com,” then that’s probably a domain owned by Google.
  • Everything else is going to be the (primarily) B2B “Google Workspace” customers, hosting their custom domain email.
Here are just a few of the largest companies using Google Workspace / Gmail to host their corporate mailboxes (as of April 2024): Twitter, Github, Spotify, Vimeo, Uber, Zocdoc, Mozilla.org, Reddit, Sentry.io, Kickstarter and AirBNB.

I’ve written extensively about Gmail deliverability; how to maximize your chances of getting mail delivered to the inbox, how to comply with the new 2024 sender requirements, and what to do if things go wrong and you find yourself unable to get through to the inbox.

Google does not offer an ISP feedback loop in the traditional sense, but they do offer a reputation dashboard called Google Postmaster Tools.

Ranking based on March 2024 data snapshot. Corrections, questions or updates? Contact me.
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