If Gmail proved anything, it was that people would, for the most part, accept any terms of service. Or at least not care enough to read the fine-print closely.
I remember the counter too. The ever growing available capacity of my mailbox that was more space than I could ever use. Just open Gmail and watch that number grow
The main advantage of Gmail at the time was honestly that they did away with tiny mailbox sizes and attachment limits.
The web UI was also vastly superior to Hotmail or Yahoo
And they blocked way more spam
Little did we know that it was them that was the real spam
Yes, it was 1GB so you never had to delete anything.
And their slogan was “search dont sort” googles search box was very advanced at the time compared to the free alternatives
I remember the counter too. The ever growing available capacity of my mailbox that was more space than I could ever use. Just open Gmail and watch that number grow