While Google's Gmail has been considered by many in the tech community to be the gold standard of web-based e-mail, it hasn't been the most popular. This could be due in part to the fact that it's a relatively young service (it was founded in 2004), and some folks just can't bring themselves to switch from older services like Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail. Part of the problem is that those users could have thousands of old e-mails and contacts that they don't want to lose.

Google is making a smart move to achieve more widespread popularity by implementing a feature that lets those users import all their e-mail and contacts from their old webmail accounts on dozens of services, including Yahoo!, AOL, the various Microsoft-owned services, Comcast, and others.

This was already possible by a variety of methods with some of these services, but it was a hassle that most computer users couldn't reasonably take on. The importing features are available now for new accounts, and will be rolled out over time to existing ones. You can read some instructions and a list of supported services at the Gmail blog.