The Economist names Paul Buchheit its 2011
Computing and Telecommunications Innovation Award winner
Joining the host of leading innovators to be celebrated at this year’s tenth anniversary of The Economist’s Innovation Awards, Paul Buchheit has been announced today as the 2011 winner in the category of Computing and Telecommunications. The award, sponsored by Huawei, recognises Mr Buchheit’s significant contributions to internet communication and commerce.
Mr Buchheit is best known as the creator and lead developer of Gmail, a free web-based email service provided by Google Inc., which is Google’s second most popular online property, and currently the third most popular email service on the web according to comScore, a market research firm. In his spare time Mr Buchheit also created the prototype that developed into Google’s AdSense advertising platform – an online advertising application enabling website owners to earn revenue by placing contextually relevant ads from Google on their website and charging advertisers for visitor click-throughs. He also suggested Google’s ‘Don’t be evil’ motto in a meeting on company values in 2000, and in his years post-Google, founded FriendFeed, a service that enables people to keep up to date on the web pages, photos, videos and music that friends and family are sharing, which was acquired by Facebook in 2009.
Tom Standage, Digital Editor at The Economist and chairman of the panel of 29 judges, said of the award decision: “Paul Buchheit’s vision and creativity enabled him to create services that are now important components in the internet ecosystem. As a partner at venture-capital firm Y Combinator, he continues to seed technology start-ups and plays an active role in bringing them to market, counting among his successes Dropbox and Airbnb. His innovative contributions to computing have become part of everyday life for millions of people.”
Victor Zhang, CEO of Huawei UK, sponsors of this year’s Computing and Telecommunications Innovation award, said: ‘‘I would like to congratulate Paul Buchheit on winning this year’s Computing and Telecommunications Innovation Award. For Huawei, innovation will always be at the heart of our business. We hope more companies, individuals and other organisations can collaborate together to offer further ground-breaking technologies which will improve communications for all.’’
Paul Buchheit is the fifth of this year’s winners to be announced. For the full list of award winners to date, please see: here. For your chance to vote on the greatest innovator from among The Economist’s winners over the last ten years, visit here until October 14th 2011.
For further information on the awards ceremony on October 20th 2011 and tables for purchase: www.economistinnovation.com
About The Economist (www.economist.com)
With a growing global readership (now 4.5m) and a reputation for insightful analysis and perspective on every aspect of world events, The Economist is one of the most widely recognised and well-read current affairs publications. The paper covers politics, business, science and technology, and books and arts, concluding each week with the obituary. Its website (www.economist.com) offers articles from the past ten years, in addition to web-only content such as blogs, debates and audio/video programmes. The Economist is now available to download for reading on Android, iPhone, or iPad devices.
