[HNDen21]

Also 1 GB of inbox storage, this was a lot more than others like Yahoo IIRC

[antisthenes]

Speaking of storage, why is Gmail still on 15GB, 11 years later, when hard drive capacities went up by at least a factor of 10x?

At least give us 30GB free, 15GB is just obnoxiously low for how much value G data mines from inboxes.

[dotcoma]

Because they want to milk you twice: your data and your wallet.

[globular-toast]

Wasn't Gmail "unlimited" in the early days?

[gsharma]

Not initially. It started with 1 GB at the time the other popular services Yahoo and Hotmail provided 2-4 MB of storage.

Google later changed it to “unlimited” which increased daily by an MB or so. At some point settled at 15 GB.

[brutal_chaos_]

Yes it was. It took years before I had a limit. I used to use gmail like google drive well before drive existed. There was even a tool called gmaildrive(0).

(0): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMail_Drive

Edit to Add: Apparently the storage wasn't unlimited? At least from a cursory look at Wikipedia. Huh. Memory is a funny thing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail

[wredue]

Gmail was unlimited space, and invite only in the early days.

The main reason for success was that Google was still generally seen as a not evil company, while other mail providers were garbage/evil.

[toyg]

iirc it went from 1gb to 4 to 8, then "unlimited" for a period, then again limited once they started charging for GApps.

[dventimi]

Yeah, I agree with you. I'm sorry, but whether it was unlimited or only 1GB, it felt unlimited to me at that time and that WAS revolutionary. At the time, GMail seemed vastly superior to the main alternative, Yahoo Mail.

[dotcoma]

It was 1 GB when Yahoo! was offering I think 5 MB.