Yeah, I agree with you. I'm sorry, but whether it was unlimited or only 1GB, it felt unlimited to me at that time and that WAS revolutionary. At the time, GMail seemed vastly superior to the main alternative, Yahoo Mail.

Wasn't Gmail "unlimited" in the early days?

Not initially. It started with 1 GB at the time the other popular services Yahoo and Hotmail provided 2-4 MB of storage.

Google later changed it to “unlimited” which increased daily by an MB or so. At some point settled at 15 GB.

When did it settle in at 15GB?

2013 it seems there is blog about combining 10 GB gmail to 5 GB drive and Google+ Photos...

https://gmail.googleblog.com/2013/05/bringing-it-all-togethe...

Not sure if it was unlimited actually before this point.

Yes it was. It took years before I had a limit. I used to use gmail like google drive well before drive existed. There was even a tool called gmaildrive(0).

(0): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMail_Drive

Edit to Add: Apparently the storage wasn't unlimited? At least from a cursory look at Wikipedia. Huh. Memory is a funny thing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail

I'm surprised too, but the screenshot showing "You are are currently using ... of your 1000GB" brings back memories. Maybe it's because back then 1GB of email storage seemed essentially unlimited?

iirc it went from 1gb to 4 to 8, then "unlimited" for a period, then again limited once they started charging for GApps.

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.

Initially, people sold these beta invites on eBay!

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

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

Speaking of storage, why is Gmail still on 15GB, 11 years later, when hard drive capacities went up by at least a factor of 10x?

At least give us 30GB free, 15GB is just obnoxiously low for how much value G data mines from inboxes.

Because they want to milk you twice: your data and your wallet.

It was 1 GB when Yahoo! was offering I think 5 MB.