John MacFarlane registered the domain name Software.com in 1992, planning to sell software downloads. He ended up building the mail room for the internet instead. His Santa Barbara company wrote the server software that phone companies and internet providers used to run email for their customers. By March 1999 it had licensed more than 37 million mailboxes. Three months later Software.com went public, just as email was becoming the reason most people got online.

A Domain Name First

MacFarlane started the business as a partnership in January 1993 and incorporated it in October 1994. Its products, Post.Office and InterMail, were built on internet standards, so they could grow from thousands of accounts to millions without changing the plumbing. Customers were the big carriers and service providers, not the people reading the mail. The bet was that every company handing out email addresses would rather license a proven system than build its own.

Phone.com Calls

Software.com sold shares at $15 on June 24, 1999, and listed on Nasdaq as SWCM. A year later it agreed to merge with Phone.com, which made the software for browsing the web on mobile phones. Each Software.com share became 1.6105 Phone.com shares. The deal closed in November 2000, and the combined company took the name Openwave Systems. Openwave later sold off its product lines and became Unwired Planet in 2012.

Cover: Pigeons and Rhododendrons, Unknown Artist. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for pigeons gathered on a fence (messages carried).