[chakalakasp]

Yep. The way I remember it is Google saved email. Email was great until there was money in gaming it, and it went to hell shortly thereafter. Gmail was the first consumer facing service I ever found that just magically made SPAM go away while retaining all the emails you wanted to see. Everything before that was just a blackholing with a list maintained by a hodgepodge of RBL maintainers hanging out on news.admin.net-abuse.email and shaking your impotent fists at that 20 or so daily SPAMS that snuck through anyway. You literally threw away email addresses because they were on too many SPAM lists and became impossible to use any more.

Google has made some missteps, but they've arguably done more to change the world and society than almost any other company in the last 50 years. They made the internet accessible to the masses.