Gmail was invitation only for a solid, what, year or two?
But if you were remotely in IT, you could get an invite. I did, and I was peanuts.
Did it exist before 2004? I bet you know!
Wouldn't that imply that you were an employee at Google sometime between 2002-2004? :P Unless I'm not getting the full picture (I was not old enough to be fully aware of Gmail's existence in 2004)