The first thing my manager said to me when he walked in was that he heard Yahoo! News retained the #1 spot again in December. I’m a bit obsessed with statistics. The first day I joined Yahoo! in 1999, that was the first thing I looked at, and I continued to dig through the data every day. It’s what drives me to work and improve our site. It gives me a perspective of what users are looking for and what they do not care about.
On the web as well as television there is only room for 3 leaders. If you are not among the big 3, either acquire to move up or you are pretty much going to stay and fight for the #4 spot. Humans are creatures of habbit and they don’t change unless there is something really different out there.
In TV
Look at ABC, NBC, CBS. There is no close #4.
In online News
Yahoo! News, MSNBC, CNN/AOL (share #3) #4 (look at the data) is about 1/3 the size of #1
Online Email
Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail, Hotmail.. #4 Google mail is 1/10th the size of #1