It was on April 1st Google announced GMail and started handing out test accounts. In the time from then till now a market for test accounts got started, matured (several competing operations offered to broker "Gmail for good deeds" deals between inviters and invitees) and now it has almost disappeared as reported by Wired News (some 10 days ago - a lifetime apparently in this kind of environment). In less opportunistic environments (like here in Denmark) invitations have been going for free for some time).

As a side note, artificial scarcity just kills as a marketing strategy. Two and a half month worth of free editorial advertising and blogger bragging is amazing. It works like Harry Potter preorders on Amazon or like dollars in high inflation countries.

Side note to side note: I tried really hard to combine the two words blogger and bragging into a new 'blogword' (brogging? blagging?) but none of them seem to convey the original two words very well.

[UPDATE: Ah - turns out that blagger is already in operation (but means something in the nature of complaining). It was the best of the two.]