At the end of May in the San Francisco Bay Area, the morning fog had yet to disperse.
The GG signs in the BART subway stations had been given a new face overnight. There were no extra colors; the entire backing board had been painted pure black, with two huge white letters printed in the center: G0.
In the lower right corner, a tiny line of italic text had been added: What are you waiting for?
Beneath it was a web address: go.com.
Richard stood on the platform with his briefcase in hand, staring at that sign for a long while.
Several people waiting for the train beside him also had their heads tilted up, discussing in low voices whether this was a teaser for some automaker's new car, or the slogan of a sports brand.
There was no trademark, no product image, only a pressing sense of urgency that pushed people to act.
The train entered the station, and the crowd poured into the carriage.
Those two letters kept circling in Richard's mind.
When he reached the office, the first thing Richard did was pull out his chair, sit down, and open the Netscape Browser on his computer.
He typed those few letters into the address bar. Enter.
The screen jumped.
The page was still extremely simple. White text on a black background.
In the very center was a constantly ticking countdown, accurate to the millisecond.
Below the countdown hung a banner: Three days until the world opens.
The first one thousand registered users will receive a permanent 4MB free mailbox.
Richard stared at the number "4MB," his coffee cup frozen in midair.
The internal company email he usually used had a pitiful quota of only 500KB. Every time he sent or received a few reports with charts, the