[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.

[HNDen21]

I remember those, you got 5 of them... later Google Wave also had invites .. which was cool but ended up in the graveyard anyway... Lifehacker's Gina Trapani even wrote a guide to Google Wave but I believe Wave was killed right before after it was published

[gsharma]

Initially, people sold these beta invites on eBay!

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/gmail-accoun...