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"Gmail founder" sounds a little funny to me.

If I am employed as a developer in a company on a new product, am I then a founder of that product? It just seems like the word founder just keeps being used more liberally as time goes on.

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I think it's appropriate in this case. Paul started Gmail inside of Google as a side project. At first most people were not a supporter, including Marissa Mayer and other peers. He was scratching an itch though and eventually got Larry and Sergey on board which helped the cause and eventually grew into what it is today.

So with that, there are a lot of similarities into what we'd call a founder today. While financially there wasn't a big risk, it was still a product he was passionate about and created from nothing.

Not really, he did it inside a big company with a nice cushy salary and lots of hardware supporting him. Absolutely ZERO risk.

That's not a founder.

It's a great product, he did a brilliant thing, but he's not the gmail 'founder'.

...and he probably wasn't all that "passionate about" it either.

Exactly. 'Creator' or 'original developer' would be far more accurate language and prestigious enough on it's own.

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