eFax.com went public under another name and sold another product. In 1997 it was JetFax, a Menlo Park company that designed the software and electronics inside multifunction office machines. Those boxes printed, faxed, copied, and scanned in one unit. JetFax licensed its technology to 25 companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, Samsung, and Intel. Two years later it renamed itself after the free service that made it famous: a fax number that delivered faxes to email.

The Brains Inside the Box

JetFax was incorporated in 1988. Its embedded systems let printer and copier makers add fax and scan features without building them from scratch. It also sold desktop software and its own branded machines. The bet was that offices would trade separate printers, faxes, and copiers for one device. That market grew, but big hardware makers held most of the profit. JetFax needed a new idea.

Free Fax Numbers

JetFax priced its IPO at $8 a share in June 1997 and listed on Nasdaq as JTFX. In 1999 the company launched eFax, which gave anyone a free fax number and sent incoming faxes to their email as attachments. Users signed up in large numbers, and the company renamed itself eFax.com. Free service was hard to turn into revenue. In 2000 eFax merged into JFAX.COM, its paid rival, which later became j2 Global and kept the eFax brand alive.

Cover: Woman Reading, Édouard Manet. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a woman reading (a message delivered).