In late 2002, after a decade-long hiatus, I was keen on once again writing code. Because I regularly receive and file hundreds of emails a day, I thought it would be fun and useful to write a great search engine for Outlook. This project was code-named "Chrome" for it was going to be a bright, shiny object inside Outlook. Since it would have to be integrated with Office, and because I wanted to learn them anyway, I chose to build Chrome using .Net and C#.

I worked on Chrome when I wasn't busy with Inventures Group business (my "day job"). The first versions of Chrome were out on the net for download in the spring of 2003. A tireless group of alpha testers with a high threshold for pain provided early feedback and helped find bugs (alas, they were not too hard to find!).

On the net, word began to spread about Chrome. By the fall of 2003, I could no longer keep up with implementing all the user requests - so in October I asked my long-time colleague Mike Belshe to come and join the Chrome project. In a moment of weakness, Mike agreed.

During the fall and winter of 2003, Mike made huge improvements to the code, mostly in the area of Outlook stability and performance. I worked hard on the indexer and search architecture. During this time, Chrome officially became "Lookout." Lookout Software was born, with me serving as the venture capitalist and the two of us coding.

Unexpectedly, many influential bloggers started recommending Lookout publicly. Downloads accelerated dramatically. Users started using Lookout's "tell-a-friend" feature to spread the word. Almost weekly, we had to pay for bandwidth increases to Lookout's download sites.

In the spring of 2004, Mike and I officially released Lookout Version 1.0. Although it was still free, it seemed to have the right mix of features and bug fixes for the vast majority of our users. Glenn Goldberg, who works with me at Inventures, began helping with user inquiries. People kept asking Glenn "when we were going to charge for Lookout!?" Many users tried to send us money or asked what our favorite charities were. In April of 2003, we all decided it was time to commercialize Lookout and had begun that process.

The MSN search team approached us in late spring of 2004. Turns out lots of people within Microsoft used Lookout and they wanted to talk with us about ways of working together. Those early discussions ultimately led to the announcement in July that Microsoft would purchase Lookout with Mike joining the MSN search team as an employee and me helping with integration as a consultant.

I now have to find a new coding project...