The leading email service was launched in beta form on April 1st, 2004. In the beginning, Gmail was an invite-only affair, and invites would remain the only way of signing up until 2007. (Thankfully they gradually got much easier to come by.)
Right from the start, Google took every opportunity to set itself apart from the competition. All users received a gigabyte of storage for their email, a massive figure that shamed what Microsoft’s Hotmail and Yahoo Mail offered at the time. That meant most people would never need to worry about permanently deleting messages again. In some ways, it also ushered in the era of seemingly limitless cloud storage. …
Harry McCracken – How Gmail Happened: The Inside Story of Its Launch 10 Years Ago
Rick McCharles 