Here is part of the reason that Gmail & Hotmail are so slow.
Site Cookies Storage
---- ------- -------
live.com 61 28.9 MB
google.com 56 15.7 MB
fastmail.com 4 3.8 MB
reddit.com 16 627 kB
weather.gc.ca 14 47.2 kB

Notice that Fastmail uses far fewer Cookies & Storage, and hence is much faster. Hotmail has always been slow, but Gmail speed has dropped dramatically in the past month. I am sure there are other factors involved, and one of those is probably attempts to reduce bot access to the server.

J.A. Coutts