By Bruce Barton

As one of the founders of WebTV Networks and a chief executive at Microsoft, Los Altos resident Phil Goldman has led a stellar high-tech life. But he may be headed to even greater heights if his latest innovation meets with the expected public acclaim.

Mailblocks, Goldman’s new company, has him talking about a revolution in e-mail. He makes the bold claim that his program eliminates spam, the dreaded unsolicited, unwanted e-mail. That’s right, eliminate. No fine print, no exceptions.

The fledgling high-tech company launched its product Monday.

“If you sign up for Mailblocks, you will never get a piece of spam again,” said Goldman, 38, sitting confidently in his downtown Los Altos office with his almost-famous e-mail service on his computer monitor. “Within a few years, everyone will switch over to us.”

The way it works is ingenious: First-time senders to someone with a Mailblocks program encounter a prompt that asks them to copy a numerical code. Then the person is let through, never having to use a code again with that particular recipient. Spam sent by computer comes up against a block when met with the coding request, because computers cannot input figures by themselves, Goldman said. The result? Spam stays away.

“Nothing computer generated can ever reach you,” the engineer said with a proud smile.

This is bound to be welcome news for e-mail users. Mailblocks cites industry studies that show the percentage of span in each inbox rising from 8 percent in 2001 to more than 36 percent in 2002. That figure is expected to surpass 50 percent this year.

For those who want desired computer-generated e-mail such as subscription services, Mailblocks gives users five aliases, called trackers, to manage these e-mails.

In addition to the spam block feature, Mailblocks addresses the two other major complaints most users have about consumer e-mail: limited storage space and lack of speed. This program offers 12MB of space and allows attachments of up to 6MB. A premium service offers up to 50MB of storage space.

Another appealing feature: Although Mailblocks is Web-based, it runs with with speed and responsiveness of an application. Its simple interface, drag-and-drop e-mail management, rich text composition options also aim to please.

“It’s really startling how fast it is,” Goldman said. “We had this crazy idea — if you log in, you should be able to see your e-mail right away.”

Even on remote or dial-up computers, Mailblocks is “blazingly fast,” Goldman said.

Even better, Mailblocks allows users to bring along their old e-mail addresses and use existing e-mail programs such as Eudora or Microsoft Outlook with Mailblocks.

Other features include prompts to let users know they have new mail or that their mail has been sent.

Goldman and company have a huge market in front of them: According to Framingham, Mass.,-based International Data Corporation (IDC), approximately 700 million people worldwide use e-mail, with about 327 million using consumer-driven e-mail programs. The former number is expected to climb to 1.2 billion by 2005.

Revolutionizing e-mail wasn’t Goldman’s intention when he left Microsoft a year and half back, where he was vice president of advanced TV services. But as a consumer using e-mail, he found existing e-mail programs had one major thing in common: They were “just really awful,” he said. “Their functionality was bad. There really was no reason (for it).”

Goldman thought he could do better. Reacting to research showing that consumers hated spam and couldn’t get enough storage or speed with free e-mail programs, he went about designing a prototype. Then he hired the best supporting cast he could find (Mailblocks has 16 employees) and funded the company himself — no wasting time pitching ideas to skeptical venture capitalists.

He sees Mailblocks as doing the same thing to e-mail as Google did to search engines. “E-mail is like search was five years ago, before Google,” Goldman said. “We’re going to be the Google of e-mail.”

Los Altos resident Susan Bratton, Mailblocks vice president of marketing and sales, signed on in February after running a firm of her own. She wasn’t looking for work, but the product proved too good to pass up. “When (Goldman) told me about the product, I said, ‘Wow, this is something you could really get behind,’” Bratton said.

“It’s an evolutionary product whose time is right,” she said. “What I like about it is that it brings a business-level capability to people’s everyday lives.”

Bratton knows first-time customers will be most drawn to the e-mail’s spam-blocking capability. “As a mother, I don’t want my child exposed to that awful spam,” she said.

However, the key feature that will keep customers is Mailblocks’ “clean, simple interface,” Bratton said. “I think it will be appealing to a wide range of people.”

Mailblocks costs $9.95 per year, with subscribers as of this week’s launch of the company locked in to this price until 2006. A premium feature is available for $24.95 annually.

“It’s really gratifying to work on this,” Goldman said. “It’s within our means. We’re making e-mail a lot better. How could we not do this?”

For more information, call 947-9361 or log on to: www.mailblocks.net.