# Gmail

Standing (still-up). Founded 2004-04-01.
Site: [gmail.com](https://gmail.com)

1 Apr 2004, and people thought the invite was an April Fool. It was not.

## Why it lasted
- A gigabyte of free storage in 2004 was a weapon. Search-as-the-model still is.
- It is the identity for Android, YouTube, Docs, and a billion 'sign in with Google' buttons.
- The invite era made it status. Status became default.

## Near deaths
- Inbox by Gmail was the rewrite. Killing Inbox in 2019 trained users that the old Gmail is the product Google will not touch.
- Privacy years and the ad-scanning story. People stayed. Switching email is death.

## What would finish it
- A phone OS identity that is not Google, plus a generation that lives in chat and treats email like fax. Fax still exists too.

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