I also got a gmail during the invite only. I was so stoked, I drew a picture of Link (from Wind Waker) holding a Gmail icon over his head in his triumphant "got a new item!" pose.

Some ISPs from back in the day did offer a few megs of space for a web site with a ~username url that you could use to build a personal site. But by the late 90s this practice began to wane as services like GeoShitties became the norm.