Having Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!'s e-mail leads over for dinner

When the Wall Street Journal's Lee Gomes has a few programmers over for dinner, he doesn't skimp on the guest list. He invited Google's Paul Buchheit, Microsoft's Kevin Doerr, and Yahoo!'s Ethan Diamond, all lead programmers in their companies' e-mail divisions, for a chat over dinner, assuring the companies that he "wasn't interested in a shouting match." Unfortunately the narrative is terribly brief, but it describes how all three developers recognize Gmail as the catalyst for the current phase of innovation in the webmail world and how the next incarnation of Yahoo! and Microsoft's products will give it a run for its money when finally released.

Tags: gmail, google, hotmail, microsoft, yahoo