Great play by Google.

Step 1: Announce a "product" on April Fool's day. Get a bit of publicity over the "humor".
Step 2: Its not a joke. Everyone spends a day or two thinking about it.
Step 3: Everyone releases another news broadcast that its not a joke.

Good product advertisement strategy.

Seriously, which reasonably well read internet user doesnt know about Gmail and its 1000mb of email storage for free at this point in time. While there may be a few of you fellow geeks that are actually doing alot of work instead of reading slashdot, TheReg and TheInq, there are quite a few more vocal readers (Magazine, Newspaper and other editors, etc) who are fully aware by now.