Rebirth of the Internet Overlord

{Time: November 27, 2002}

{Location: United States}

November 27th in California, USA, is the last working day before Thanksgiving, and the festive atmosphere has already spread in this company called Fengyu.

Originally this should be a common thing, but somewhere in the corner of Fengyu's office it was not the case.

There are three people here with solemn expressions gathered around a computer. The monitor in front of them is displaying the URL. The person in front of the monitor is constantly looking for something on the page of this URL, but he doesn't seem to find what he is looking for.

something.

At this moment, a prompt popped up in his Linux system window. In a chat window on his skrpe, a friend sent him a lengthy URL and a paragraph of text.

"Man, this is the gmail invitation registration link. I finally got it from someone else, and someone is already selling it for 50 US dollars each on Billion Times. So, I wish you good luck."

After seeing that paragraph, the expression of the man sitting in front of the computer relaxed a little. But then he concentrated on clicking on the string of URLs, and then he saw that the three of them were having a hard time on the gmail official website.

Found the gmail registration page.

Speaking of which, what kind of registration page is this? It is simply too simple in the eyes of a person who operates a computer.

You only need to fill in your name and an email account, and you will get a gmail email address that is very popular in Silicon Valley these days!

The registration process does not even use the human-machine verification program that is currently popular in Silicon Valley. You must know that the human-machine verification program has been popularized on the Internet as the best way to verify robot registration since it was used by Beibao.

But then he thought about it, why does a registration method like gmail require any human-computer verification?

He has been paying attention to this domain name for so long, and even wrote a robot registration program just to register an account as soon as Gmail went online.

But in fact, after he learned that Gmail launched email, it took him half a month to get a hot invitation code from a friend he had known for many years on a forum.

From beginning to end, the robot registration device he prepared was not used at all.

The extremely rare Gmail invitation code on Billion Times is currently auctioned for even more than the US$50 that a friend told him. The highest price he has ever seen has already reached US$75.

Simply fill in your name and email address, and you will get a gmail email immediately. And you will quickly and smoothly enter the email usage interface!

It's so easy, but these damn scalpers have copied the price to such a high price?

But he had no choice. The silky smooth and smooth experience of Gmail reached its peak when he clicked on the email with the theme "Congratulations on being invited to become a Gmail user".

"I'm going to find Sergey. We have to let them know that our [g-era mailbox] is in trouble!"

He didn't look at the screen again, said something to the two people behind him, and left here holding the notebook.

On the last working day before Thanksgiving, the solemn expression on his face as he held his notebook was completely different from the relaxed expressions on other people's faces in Fengyu's office.

When he finally walked to the office where Sergey Brin's nameplate was hanging, he found that there was no one inside, so he asked loudly to other people at the door of the office, "Hey, guys. Who can

Tell me, where is Sergey?"

His loud voice attracted the owner of the desk closest to Sergey's office. Sensing his anxiety, the man stuck his head out from behind the monitor and responded to him, "Ralph, Sergey, go over to the 3rd unit."

I went, I went there for a while, I think I’ll be back soon.”

Before the man finished speaking, Ralph hurriedly walked in the direction of Development Department 3, causing the man to mutter a few words under his breath.

Ralph walked in such a hurry that he almost bumped into someone at the corner of the road.

When he paused urgently, he realized that the man in front of him was the Sergey he was looking for.

Sergey was obviously startled, "Ralph, why are you in such a hurry?"

"Sergey, I'm looking for you."

Ralph directly pulled the curious Sergey to the table next to him, opened the notebook in his arms, and pointed the content on the browser to Sergey, "Sergey, look. We wanted to register before.

Domain name, someone has already released this email product called [gmail] before us!"

"Oh? Is there really someone walking in front of us?" Sergey was a little surprised, but still a little careless.

Sergey is one of the founders of Fengyu. In his eyes, Fengyu has gone through many twists and turns before it has developed into what it is today. In the future, Fengyu will definitely be a pioneer in traffic drainage technology in the world.

So from the bottom of his heart, he didn't think anyone could compare to them.

As early as last year before Christmas, Ralph initiated this mailbox product within the company - [g era mailbox].

No one has any problem with Ralph's choice, because in Fengyu, everyone has 20% of their free time after work. This 20% of time is at the discretion of every employee besides completing their own work.

.

Ralph felt that what he wanted to do was a cross-century mailbox product - [g era mailbox], so let him do it. Fengyu supported such free creation in the early days of its founding. At that time, Ralph's idea

It also attracted two other interested guys to participate.

Since then, Ralph has had many brainstorming sessions with Sergey. Ralph has continued to improve his ideas. When he was describing the new concept of [g-era mailbox], Sergey already felt that Ralph

This [g era mailbox] led by my husband is of innovative value.

From that moment on, he felt that no one would be ahead of Ralph in creativity.

But he casually followed Ralph's guidance, and when he saw the [gmail] email function demonstration on the screen one after another, Sergey no longer seemed as calm as before.

What's going on with those operations that clearly show no trace of refresh?

Has anyone really applied refresh-free technology to web pages so quickly?

There is really someone who has taken the lead in implementing this idea before they did!

You know, since August this year when they thought of [g era mailbox], they have been paying attention to gmail, a domain name that fits this idea very well.

They remembered that this domain name, which had been registered as early as 1995, had a change of registrant in August 2001, and there had been no change since then. They tried to contact the owner named Ning, but the other party never responded.

Any reply.

Could it be that this [gmail] idea was thought of by Ning before August 2001?

And Ralph showed him forum posts and blog posts that were obviously promotional. How could anyone come up with such a promotion method?

"1024m free email, gmail will lead email to leap into the g era".

The promotion method of this forum post is exactly the same as their original intention when they talked about [g era mailbox]!

In this era where the unit of mailbox capacity is megabytes (m), which is as strong as a giant and a dumb tiger can only have a mailbox of less than 10m, [G Era Mailbox] can produce a 1024m mailbox as soon as it is released. It is destined to be a product that attracts attention.

!

But now in the promotion information on many forums and blogs, whether it is the domain name of the founder of [gmail] or the 1024 m mailbox capacity when it was first launched, it is all the same as what they originally imagined, completely centered around

The “g” unit of capacity is used to create products and generate buzz.

This [gmail] was fully prepared early in the morning. It implemented all the ideas they brainstormed at that time, and it was even better than their original ideas!

The more Sergey thought about it, the more he felt something was wrong. He motioned to Ralph to get on the computer, "Let's go, I'll find Larry Page, and then we'll meet at your group."

The two of them split up, and 10 minutes later Fengyu's Gmail project team gathered five people.

They are Larry, Sergey and the other two members of the gmail project team led by Ralph.

Larry hurried over under the leadership of Sergey and read what Sergey had just seen. He also frowned like Sergey.

"1024m combined with 1g capacity, do they know how much it will cost them to pay for the server..." Larry felt like he couldn't continue talking.

Although everything is going well for Fengyu Company at present, when Ralph wanted to develop [g era mailbox], the support the company could provide was obviously insufficient.

At that time, the "server cluster" that was agreed to be equipped for Ralph's [g era mailbox] was just an old Pen III server that had been eliminated from the old Fengyu servers accumulated in the past two years. The configuration of those servers was not high.

300 servers can only register up to 1,000 users based on the expected 1g capacity.

Although Ralph said at the time that technical means could be used to support the use of more accounts, he also said that users could not use that much space.

But now it seems that even if the company invests in support for Ralph's [g era mailbox], this support has no practical significance now.

Because all the ideas brainstormed by Ralph's team have now been put into practice by this [gmail].

Larry was suddenly worthless for Ralph, because just last month, Ralph had hurriedly approached him and Sergey and told him that he had thought of a promotion strategy that could solve the shortage of server capacity.

He said at the time that they could only release a few hundred users and develop a series of invitation code strategies to continuously release them by controlling users. On the one hand, they can control the capacity, and on the other hand, they can also allow those who use the invitation code to register their mailboxes to generate

A special feeling of being part of the "Proud Club".

But this great idea that he was forced to squeeze out after thinking hard at that time was also used first.

【gmail】After that, anyone who continues to use this invitation code strategy will no longer be the only one in the world!

The [g-era mailbox] and [gmail] developed by Ralph are only a few steps away, and they even have many similarities.

But, the world,

easier to remember,

Most only have first place!

Thinking of this, Larry looked at Sergey and saw his partner helplessly shaking his head at him, and the confusion in Ralph's eyes made people sigh.

[g era mailbox] has not yet been born, but it has already been ranked second

Time, space, and technology are already ahead of others in at least two aspects.

No matter how helpless Larry and Sergey, the founders of Fengyu, were, they would not be as sad as Ralph, who had insisted on this product for two years.

Although the two big bosses didn't say anything, Ralph, who knew everything, knew that unless he surpassed it in terms of capacity and technology, his [g era mailbox] would only be forced to join the game as a chaser.

In an unequal game.

Ralph, who knew Fengyu's current situation, was suddenly not optimistic about his project.

It took a long time before Larry said, "Ralph, why don't you just wait a little longer. Since we don't have money to invest in [G-era Mailbox] now, you should work hard to make it better. Wait until we go public to raise funds."

With new funds, we will use [g era mailbox] to return to the mailbox market."

"only……"

Although Larry didn't say anything, Ralph understood and so did Sergey.

In this era where creativity is king, when they join the market at that time, do they want to surpass the well-armed number one with new investments?

I'm afraid it's not that easy!

/*The history of gmail is really an interesting thing. 300 Pensan old servers have long been the core of the Google account system. Wow, looking back at this history, I really feel sour...*/