April 1, 2004. Google announced free email with one gigabyte of storage. Free.
The tech industry didn’t only laugh. They laughed hard. The Guardian called it “an elaborate April Fools’ prank.” Others called it “financially insane.”
One engineer, Paul Buchheit, built the first working version as a side project on Google’s company time. It took the rest of the industry a decade to catch up. Today, 1.8 billion people use it. Including me and almost certainly you.
📤 Why Gmail is genius
Here’s what nobody tells you about that free storage. Google didn’t give it to you to be generous.
Before Gmail, everyone deleted emails to save space. Google realized if you never have to delete, you never will. And if you never delete, they own a permanent, searchable archive of your entire life. Every receipt. Every argument. Every doctor’s appointment. That’s not a conspiracy theory.
By giving you infinite space, they ensured you’d never clean out the data they needed to build a precise profile of your buying habits. That’s the business model.
👉 Pro tip to change your cringey Gmail: As of today, you can finally change your Gmail address. Go to myaccount.google.com/google-account-email, then Personal info > Email > Google Account email > Change Google Account email. Your old address doesn’t vanish. It stays as an alternate that still receives mail and works to sign in. The catch is you only get one change every 12 months. So choose wisely, 2004-era self.
🤭 Who’s laughing now?
In 1999, Larry Page and Sergey Brin tried to sell Google to a company called Excite for $1 million. Excite’s CEO said no. Excite doesn’t exist anymore. Google is worth $2 trillion.
In 2000, Netflix offered to sell itself to Blockbuster for $50 million. The CEO laughed them out of the room. Literally laughed. One Blockbuster remains open. Bend, Oregon. Tourist attraction.
In 2007, a journalist showed Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer the new iPhone. He laughed on camera. Belly-laughed. Said it would “never get any significant market share” because it had no keyboard. That clip is still on YouTube. Apple is now worth over $3 trillion. Microsoft that day? $300 billion.
When I was pitching my radio show in the mid 1990s, ABC told me tech was “only for geeks and freaks.” CBS called the internet “a total fad, like a pet rock.” Both passed. So I built my own network. No debt. No investors. Nobody to answer to but my listeners and radio affiliates.
When the buyout offers eventually came, I got to say the two sweetest words in business: “No thanks.” That felt so good.
🚂 The money train
These Big Tech companies didn’t only survive the mockery. They turned us into both the product and free labor.
👉 Share this fun fact at a dinner party. You know those “I am not a robot” tests where you click traffic lights and crosswalks? You weren’t proving you’re human. You were training Google’s self-driving car AI. For free. Every click. Every crosswalk. Unpaid work, delivered with a smile.
Right now, people are calling AI glasses that see what you see a “creepy gimmick.” In five years, you’ll be wearing them to find your keys. And handing over a 24/7 video feed of your home to do it.
📩 Send this to someone who still thinks AI is a fad. The executives who said that about the internet aren’t in charge anymore. Use the handy links below.