Rocketmail wikipedia the

RocketMail!

RocketMail was a free web-based email service that was launched in 1996 by Dawson and Steve Madani, two entrepreneurs who were just 19 and 20 years old at the time. The service was initially hosted on a single server in the founders' apartment in San Mateo, California.

RocketMail quickly gained popularity due to its ease of use, fast email delivery, and generous storage space (at the time, 2 MB per user!). The service also offered features like spam filtering, virus scanning, and support for attachments.

In 1997, RocketMail was acquired by Excite, a popular internet portal at the time, for $100 million. Excite continued to operate RocketMail as a standalone service, and it remained a popular choice for free email accounts.

In 1999, Excite was acquired by @Home Network, and RocketMail became part of the company's suite of internet services. However, the service continued to struggle with scalability issues and technical problems, which led to a decline in popularity.

In 2001, @Home Network filed for bankruptcy, and RocketMail was eventually shut down. The domain name was later acquired by Yahoo!, which used it to redirect users to its own email service.

Today, RocketMail is largely a relic of the past, but it remains an interesting footnote in the history of the internet and email services.