Spam exploded in 2003[1] to the modern experience of it. Before that, spam was somewhat infrequent, even without countermeasures.

I recall in the 2001 time period being so annoyed by each individual spam note that I would respond to the appropriate "abuse@" email. By 2004, it was a torrent and totally impractical, and I don't think it was because of my own notes to administrators.

[1] https://www.emailtray.com/blog/email-spam-trends-2001-2012/

When Gmail launched on April 1, 2004, there were two big selling points for me - storage and spam.

...and search. That was amazing.

I can confirm it was amazing.

I got my first gmail address via an invite and it was light-years ahead of everything else.

Nowadays it's possibly worse than most other providers, and it doesn't filter spam as well as it used to. Nowadays I just dislike it.

I remember the first spam I ever received. It was in 1998 on my first day working at AOL. It promised an advanced degree from a prestigious, unaccredited institution. The spammers were somewhat honest back then.

My brain swapped the second zero to a two... But I did think the 1990 reference a little odd..

Actually, as the patent author of what are now called deep fakes, 2004 was when I got formal in my research to create the tech, with full knowledge of what it has become, and a mission to prevent the Orwellian uses active today.

Back then, we called it "Photoshop"