That was because it was a much, much better product than everything else: we forget it today, but most other places would allow you to store only a few megabyte

That was because it was a much, much better product than everything else: we forget it today, but most other places would allow you to store only a few megabytes of email, and suddenly here is a service that allows you store several hundreds of times what you could do before. You don't need to generate hype when your product is that good. Same as you don't need to generate power for an electric car powered by an antimatter generator.