Do you see all those doodads on Yahoo! Mail? All those news articles and pictures that you might not care about? Do you see the same thing on Gmail? Yeah, Yahoo! Mail has a lot of stuff that makes it slower.
I think both are good.. People say gmail is faster but I honestly don't notice (I have very fast internet).
One more vote for Gmail. Yes, gmail is faster and I think the most secure free mail service. Unlike, hotmail whose millions accounts were hacked, gmail has been found secure and reliable. Gmail tracks the IP address and also provides a facility to add contact number.
Yes, As per my knowledge Yahoo is slower than Gmail. Yahoo and Gmail both are the best mail service in the Internet but Yahoo is bit slower than Gmail.
I'm using both - I like how Yahoo looks, but I like GMail more for its ability to be used in Outlook, for example, via IMAP/SMTP (no such feature on Yahoo, you even have to enter captcha when sending more than a couple emails in a short period of time)...