Annaliza E. Nebres

OOC

Case study 12

Paul Buchheit

(Creator, Gmail)

Paul Buchheit was the creator of Gmail, Google’s web-based email system which anticipated most aspects of what is now called 2.0. He was Google’s 23^rd employee. He also developed the first prototyped of Adsense, Google’s program for running ads on their websites. He was the one who suggested the company’s motto which is “don’t be evil”. Even though he wasn’t one of the founders he contributed more to Google than many founders do their startups.

Gmail was both side project and a commission by Google. His idea came from his high school days that he wants to check his email but he needs to go back to is room. What he wants is an email that you can access anywhere. So he wanted to make some kind of web-based email. But he really doesn’t know what he was going this idea never got useful and got off the ground. 

They built the first version to create an email program and build something that would allow you to search through your email. It was the first version where you can search your email because according to Buchheit he received 500 emails a day so he need a very big search. You can search your own email. He also had a side project, Adsense the content-target ads. He wrote a prototyped but it is throwaway but it got people thinking because it proved that it was possible. While this projects he had coworkers who helped him. There was a time when they launched the project; they gave everyone a gigabyte of storage to start with. They don’t believe it really works; they think it’s only a joke. 

They made Gmail looking at the perspective view of the users. Every time the users have a problem they can come up with a solution to make it better. He was first part of Intel but he got bored that’s why he wants something interesting so he emailed his resume to Google and they called up Buchheit and then he took the job.

The phrase that stating “don’t be evil” was based on some of the search engines at that time where selling search results and mixing them with the real one. So people think that its one of the search result and so Google said that they would never do that and they haven’t. And he also thought that it was a very catchy phrase.

Three things I’ve learned are: first even though you’re not one of the investors and you just an ordinary employee you can contribute something to the company that is very helpful and will make the company well-known. Second is, doing a startup you should think the users perspective because they are the one whose using it and if they find a hard time on how to execute it they just ignored it. Third, people are the biggest resource because they are the one who’s doing the system and you will know that they are really smart.