Paul Buchheit was Google’s 23rd employee. He was
the creator and lead developer of Gmail, Google’s
web-based email system, which anticipated most
aspects of what is now called Web 2.0. As part of his
work on Gmail, Buchheit developed the first prototype
of AdSense, Google’s program for running ads
on other websites. He also suggested the company’s
now-famous motto, “Don’t be evil,” at a 2000 meeting
on company values.
Although not a founder, Buchheit probably contributed
more to Google than many founders do their
startups. Gmail was in effect a startup within Google—a dramatically novel
project on the margins of the company, initiated by a small group and brought
to fruition against a good deal of resistance.
Livingston: Take me back to how things got started. Was Gmail a side project
or commissioned by Google?
Buchheit: A little bit of both, actually. I started working on email software a
long time ago. I think it was maybe 1996, but it was just a little project. I had all
these ideas that never really went anywhere. Oddly enough, I think I was calling
it Gmail at the time, for some other reason. It was just a random project—
not necessarily the predecessor to Gmail—but it was something that I’d been
thinking about because I’d been sort of unhappy with email for a long time.
It was before Hotmail and I was in college at the time. If you wanted to
check your email, you’d have to go back to your dorm room. I thought, “That’s
so stupid. I should be able to just check it anywhere.” So I wanted to make
some kind of web-based email. But I really didn’t know what I was doing, so it
didn’t go anywhere. I wrote something, but it was never useful and never got off
the ground.
So fast-forward to much later: I was here at Google and I had worked on
Google Groups, which is not exactly the same, but it’s related. After the first

generation of Google Groups had mostly wrapped up, they asked me if I
wanted to build some type of email or personalization product. It was a pretty
non-specific project charter. They just said, “We think this is an interesting
area.” Of course, I was excited to work on that.
Livingston: So they didn’t ask for an email product?
Buchheit: They were very general—just kind of saying, “Yeah, we think there’s
something interesting to do here,” but it wasn’t like they gave me a list of features.
People really weren’t sure what it was. And this was when Google was still
pretty much thought of as exclusively search, so even the idea of doing something

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