A historical footnote: When Gmail was announced on April 1, 2004, people assumed that it was an April Fool's Joke. A gigabyte of storage for free seemed absurd.
It was invite-only, which possibly made it seem more desirable than it might otherwise be. But really, I think the biggest factor was its portability. At the time, you tended to use either your work/school email or the email associated with your ISP, both of which could change over time. You can keep your gmail address forever, and people saw that as a benefit.
There were competitors, but they had clunkier interfaces and smaller storage. GMail showed what web apps could do, in a way that's old hat now but was rather shocking at the time.
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A historical footnote: When Gmail was announced on April 1, 2004, people assumed that it was an April Fool's Joke. A gigabyte of storage for free seemed absurd.
It was invite-only, which possibly made it seem more desirable than it might otherwise be. But really, I think the biggest factor was its portability. At the time, you tended to use either your work/school email or the email associated with your ISP, both of which could change over time. You can keep your gmail address forever, and people saw that as a benefit.
There were competitors, but they had clunkier interfaces and smaller storage. GMail showed what web apps could do, in a way that's old hat now but was rather shocking at the time.