[AceJohnny2]

The case FOR gmail:

1. it solved spam

2. it solved finding specific emails in the haystack of your years/decades of emails

It's hard to overstate how important 1 is, for anyone who doesn't know how mail was 20 years ago. Google was able to leverage its dominance (in concert with the other huge hosts like Hotmail) to impose significant changes to email infrastructure, by requiring stuff like SPF and DKIM.

Frankly, other email providers are riding on the wave of Google's efforts and impact to sanitize the email space.

[rrr_oh_man]

Also: more than 5MB storage

[kennywinker]

migadu's basic plan includes 50gb of storage.

[metalliqaz]

parent was referring to the era when gmail appeared. GBs of storage was entirely unheard-of

[dghlsakjg]

Can confirm.

If I recall, gmail started out with 1gb in ~2004.

It was pretty standard at the time for an email account to allow 20-100mb. 1gb of free, no questions asked email storage was completely wild, then they doubled it!

Prior to this, it was a regular thing for people to go through their emails and delete old ones, and download attachments several times per year or even more often.

Keep in mind that in this era, it was not uncommon for a computer to have just 20gb or HDD, so a free 2gb was a serious amount of storage.

[dsr_]

It solved spam -- but is also the largest source of spam on the planet.