Turning a commodity into a value added service

Before gmail and others, the e-mail was a 20-100 MB storage provided by your ISP with a POP / IMAP mechanism to retrieve it.

Gmail and others have turned it into a value-added service by

• providing unlimited storage
• having search capabilities

Although web access does add value, I see it more as a general tendency, that is something not available over the web has just not kept pace.