What is Email?
Email or e-mail is the short form of electronic mail. Email is a protocol for sending, receiving and storing electronic messages. Email has been widely used and now it becomes the preferred way for communication over the Internet.
There is no certainty when email was invented, but the father of the modern version email is regarded to be American Ray Tomlinson. His idea was to find the name of user and the computer that the user was located. Then the message could send to that user. At that time, the email address is in the form of username@usercomputer.
Now, the email standard becomes username@domainname. And users can send and receive email using SMTP (Simple Message Transfer Protocol). SMTP is the standard protocol for sending and receiving messages over the Internet Protocol. Other protocols such as: POP (Post Office Protocol) and IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol), let users to retrieve and store messages.
In the past, to use email, we need to have a dedicated program for email, or we call it, email client software. There are many email application available on the Internet, some are free, and some cost money to use it.
After that webmail become popular, because user can use email on the Internet without needing to install any email software. Some email services design the primary interface just for email, and also let user to open email account for free of charge.