[ignostic]

I disagree. I never saw an ad for gmail. The initial exclusivity was a gimmick, but it was dropped pretty quickly. As I recall any user could invite 10 people, including their own email accounts. Also I got like 25 more invites for reasons I can't remember after 3 people signed up with my codes. If you couldn't find someone with an invite code, you weren't asking the right people.

I remember having to actively manage my storage space on Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. Some email clients would delete your email unless yous said otherwise or paid after like 60 days. Google gave way more for free. And the promise of "more storage" has continued, because I've only had to manage my email space once in a decade, mostly deleting daily reports that included big attachments. Also I'd have to sort through spam emails, which I don't think I even have the time for today. And then there were no annoying banner ads.

That's similar to the whole reason Google search caught on. They had a clean interface, fewer ads, and slightly better results. They did next to 0 advertising back then, unlike Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and Alta Vista. They just released a marginally better and significantly less annoying product.

The few products Google hasn't killed succeeded because they were legitimate improvements before their time or at least "good enough" alternatives back when people trusted Google more than Microsoft or other companies.