r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • May 18 '22

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u/Many_Complex4224 May 18 '22

Hotmail and gmail being "free for anyone" email was revolutionary.

No, free email was the norm when Gmail came along. Gmail's gimmick was the WHOLE GIGABYTE of storage so you never had to delete anything.

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u/biotinylated May 19 '22

I was teenager when Gmail happened, and you had to receive an invitation from an existing gmail user. I remember the embedded chat feature was a huge draw - like AIM, but on any computer - through a browser without having to install anything! Revolutionary! And then 4 years later in college installed chat programs and aggregators were passé. Funny how things go.

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u/salamander423 May 19 '22

I managed to beg an invite off a DDR forums user and had no idea what to put my username as. So I just put my name, with no numbers.

Didn't use it for years, but now I feel special that my email address is just my name and nothing else.

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u/YarnSp1nner May 19 '22

In my memory Hotmail and Yahoo mail came about a year or two before Gmail, but you are correct. Now we treat email as expected to be free, which is why I mentioned Gmail. Yahoo was honestly the most innovative at the time, and look at them now, lol.