"We were trying to make the email experience better for our users," he said. "We ended up making it better for yours, too." ~Buchheit

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113513060952028080-FphgngKufzazqjmsp2vkGNe7SVU_20060120.html?mod=blogs

The Men Who Came
To Dinner, and What
They Said About Email
December 21, 2005; Page B1

The three programmers spend their days developing what each hopes will be the world's best email program -- and trying to beat the pants off each other. They spent an evening last week at my dinner table, talking about it all.

Email is one of the liveliest niches in tech right now. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo all view it as a key to winning new customers and making money off current ones. And so they are innovating with new email programs and services all the time.

Since all three companies' email teams are in my neck of the woods, I thought it would be fun to have the heads of each team come over one night for dinner and conversation. The three companies were good sports and agreed, in part because I said I wasn't interested in a shouting match.

As it happened, Google's Paul Buchheit, 29 years old; Kevin Doerr, 39, of Microsoft (no relation to the venture capitalist) and Ethan Diamond, 34, of Yahoo were all on their best behavior. Whatever they may say about their competitors at work, at my table they were gracious and complimentary. Gentle teasing was about as far as they would go.

The evening began with even the Microsoft and Yahoo delegates agreeing that much of the current excitement in the email world can be traced back to last year's debut of Mr. Buchheit's Gmail. The program had a fast user interface with a fresh new look, along with a then-remarkable gigabyte of free storage.

Mr. Buchheit said he started working on Gmail after observing that other email programs were getting worse, not better. Microsoft's Mr. Doerr said that at his company, Gmail was a thunderbolt. "You guys woke us up," he told Mr. Buchheit. Yahoo's Mr. Diamond, then at a startup with its own hot, new email program, said Gmail was the final impetus that Yahoo needed to buy his company.

Mr. Buchheit responded with a victory lap. "We were trying to make the email experience better for our users," he said. "We ended up making it better for yours, too."

The evening wasn't all a Gmail love-in, though. The Microsoft and Yahoo representatives said their many millions of users might not accept some of Gmail's departures from email norms, such as the way the program groups messages into "conversations." The two men also razzed Mr. Buchheit a bit, saying that it had been easy for Google to promise a lot of storage to its users because it carefully controlled how many users Gmail would have by requiring an invitation to get an account.

Indeed, more than 18 months after its unveiling, Gmail is still a beta, or "test" product. But so are the new email versions the Microsoft and Yahoo programmers are working on. And no one is saying when any of the beta periods will be over.

Whatever early lead Gmail may have had in creating a next-generation email program, both Microsoft and Yahoo have more than caught up. I wondered out loud to Mr. Buchheit if Gmail, the pioneer, might now be falling behind. "There is a lot more we want to build," he responded.

I asked each to say what in his product he was most proud of. Mr. Diamond noted that in Yahoo's mail program, users can see their entire inbox in a single screen, rather than having to page through it screenload after screenload. It was a hard feature to add, he said. The other two men nodded their heads in agreement; neither has yet matched it.

Mr. Buchheit said what he most liked about Gmail is the ease and fluidity with which it lets him work with his messages.

Mr. Doerr noted the powerful desktop-like features of his Microsoft product, such as the on-the-fly spell checking of messages as they are typed.

The men reported similar pressures: cranky users of Web browsers with tiny market shares demanding that their browsers be supported, while not appreciating how much work is involved. And the struggle to find a way to innovate with a product -- but not so much that existing customers will be alienated.

At one point, Mr. Doerr wondered when the new Yahoo mail program would have the whimsical touch of other Yahoo products. "It's not Yahoo yet," he said to Mr. Diamond. "It's not fun."

The latter concurred, replying, in effect, "Just you wait."

While all three talked about the pressure of having to present the product to the big boss, Mr. Diamond had the best such story. He told of nervously showing his software to Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, who at the time was pacing around the room gripping a golf club. Mr. Diamond said that all the while he kept thinking of a similar scene in "The Untouchables," but one involving a baseball bat and, in the end, considerably more violence.

When the end of the evening came, everyone seemed sated with good food and pleasant company, to the point where there was talk about gathering again in a year to look back on the email events of 2006.

Who knows? Maybe the three products will be out of beta by then. And maybe a glove or two will come off as a result.

Write to Lee Gomes at lee.gomes@wsj.com