Pioneers in modern mail technology

In just one day, he built Gmail. Paul Buchheit joined Google in 1999. He was the 23rd employee. Back then, Google was a small search engine. In 2001, he was tasked with improving email. Email was a mess. ↳ Yahoo offered 4MB of storage. ↳ Hotmail gave only 2MB. Searching for emails barely worked. Clicking anything meant reloading the whole page. People deleted emails daily just to stay within limits. Paul didn’t want to just fix email. He aimed to reimagine it. Using leftover code from Google Groups, he created a prototype in one day. It wasn’t perfect. But it worked. ↳ It used AJAX for speed. ↳ It grouped messages into conversations. ↳ It made your inbox searchable. ↳ It offered 1GB of free storage, which was 100 times more than anyone else. Inside Google, it was called Caribou, a joke about projects that never launch. But Gmail did launch. Paul’s approach was not about perfection. His belief was simple: Build something 100 people love, not something a million people kind of like. This thinking shaped everything. Gmail was an internal tool for years. Then came April 1, 2004. Google launched it to the public. A free email service with 1GB storage from a search engine. On April Fool’s Day. Many thought it was a prank. But it wasn’t. It launched with invites only. Some invites sold for over $150 on eBay. That scarcity made it go viral. Gmail became a status symbol. The infrastructure? Just 300 old Pentium III machines. But it worked. And people loved it. It wasn’t made for everyone. It was for power users drowning in emails. It was fast, clean, and useful. And it kept getting better. Gmail stayed in beta for five years. Features like spam filters, smart replies, Google Chat, Calendar, and Drive turned it into a full ecosystem. ↳ By 2012, it reached 400 million users. ↳ By 2025, it crossed 1.8 billion, nearly 25% of the world. It now holds about 35% of the global email client market. And it drives a big part of Google’s $224 billion in ad revenue. All from a one-day prototype. No team. No budget. No perfect plan. Just a side project. Today, Gmail manages your documentation, passwords, memories, taxes, and life. Paul later joined Y Combinator and helped shape companies like Dropbox and Airbnb. Build for love, not likes. Start scrappy. Just one person solving a real problem. That’s how you build for a billion people.

Read it carefully: The Accurate Historical Record 1. Early Messaging at MIT (1960s) The earliest form of electronic messaging dates back to the 1960s on MIT's Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS). In 1965, Tom Van Vleck and Noel Morris implemented a MAIL command, allowing users to leave messages for others on the same system WIRED Wikipedia . 2. Ray Tomlinson and ARPANET (1971) Historically, Ray Tomlinson is widely credited with inventing the networked email as we know it. In 1971, he adapted a program called SNDMSG, enabling messages to be sent between different computers over the ARPANET. He also introduced the now-familiar “@” symbol to separate the user name and host computer—a convention still in use today WIRED Wikipedia +1 . His contribution is acknowledged as the foundation of email as a communication tool across networks. 3. V. A. Shiva Ayyadurai’s 1978 Program V. A. Shiva Ayyadurai—often referred to as "Dr. Email"—claims to have built a software program called EMAIL in 1978, at age 14, while in New Jersey. His system modeled an interoffice mail system with features like Inbox, Outbox, Address Book, CC/BCC, etc. He copyrighted the software in 1982, which is stored in the Smithsonian archives The Pioneer TIME Wikipedia historyofemail.com +1 . He has had some prominent endorsements, notably from Noam Chomsky, who in 2012 supported Ayyadurai’s claim that he invented “email” as a full-fledged organizational messaging system—asserting the term "email" was coined by him in 1978 WIRED Computerworld Email on Acid . However, Ayyadurai’s claim remains highly controversial. Many historians and IT pioneers assert that earlier network-based email systems existed and influenced how electronic messaging evolved. Critics argue that Ayyadurai's system was a stand-alone, intra-organization software, and that professional networked email via ARPANET dates back to 1971 TheQuint Boston Magazine Wikipedia Reddit . Several prominent publications, such as The Washington Post and others, issued corrections clarifying that while his program was notable, he cannot be credited as the inventor of email outright TheQuint Wikipedia . Furthermore, academic reviews and technical historians largely place the birth of email earlier—with Tomlinson’s work in 1971 as the pivotal moment.

SABEER BHATIA Example of another democratization of entrepreneurship Meet the man who sold his company to Microsoft for Rs 1600 crore in 18 months. 1. Born in Chandigarh (Punjab) to a banker mom and an army officer dad, Sabeer Bhatia always wanted to become an army officer. But then he was introduced to the World of science and pursued it. After appearing for the IIT exam, Sabeer had a heartbreak. 2. He missed IIT by a few ranks and joined BITS Pilani instead as an electrical engineering student. After that, he received a scholarship from the California Institute of Technology, being the only international student in 1988 to receive it. He landed in the USA with just Rs 3500 in his hand. 3. Sabeer started working at FirePower Systems, where people could share photos and phone numbers on a web database service. Since the services were limited, he used a firewall to send emails through ISP services. He thought he had it, but there was a problem. 4. The firewall restricted people connected to different servers from accessing their personal email accounts. He wanted to solve this with a web-based solution, allowing anyone to access their email from anywhere in the World using the Internet. He again thought he had it, but there was a problem. 5. Nobody believed this could be a thing. Twenty VCs had rejected investment in his idea, but Sabeer kept trying. Finally, he raised 1 CR from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and started a company on web language (HTML). On July 4, 1996, HotMaiL was born. 6. Unlike people's beliefs, HotMail spread like wildfire as the World's first 100% remote email provider. It grew from zero to 300,000 users in the first three months. And most of it came from word of mouth at an acquisition cost of just Rs 30. But Sabeer needed faster growth. 7. He started prompting users to try their free email service in the footer of every Hotmail email and offered free trials to journalists in exchange for their writing on Hotmail and 2 GB of free storage. Hotmail went from adding 1000 users daily to 10,000 users. It raised Rs 680 crore, and more magic happened. 8. By 1995, it had grown to a whopping 5 million users. It was so popular that 30% of Sweden's population used it, and it controlled a 25% market share. Even the World's largest email provider, America Online (AOL), had just 2 million users ahead of them. And then there was a twist. 9. Hotmail didn't want to be just an email provider but a full-stack, and Microsoft was building the same with their newly launched suite - MSN. On December 31 1997, Microsoft acquired Hotmail for Rs 1600 crore in an all-stock deal, making it their biggest acquisition of the time. 10. Today, Hotmail, popularly known as Microsoft Outlook, has over 400 million users. With a 13.1% market share, it is the World's third most-used email service. Sabeer Bhatia sold his company to a giant like Microsft in 18 months. He is a poster boy for Indians' ability to build and sell technology, even to the US.