"Google on Wednesday said its Gmail service is now open to anyone who wants an account. Previously the service, which provides users with 2.8GB of e-mail storage space, has been by invitation only."
Like it was so hard to get an account before with nearly everyone having 100 invites and not being able to get rid of them, now finally you don't need an invite to join gmail. So if for some weird reason you couldn't get an account before,
now you can.