Also, Hotmail was actively decreasing the amount of storage it offered, trying to get people to pay for more. I think it was just 5 or 20 megabytes.

It was common to ask people to not include a copy of email they were replying to, to save on space.

Needless to say, I hopped on gmail in an instant. And I felt like a kingmaker as I doled out my limited invites.