Sheth was joined by enterprise division leaders Matthew Glotzbach and Dave Girouard when he proposed Gmail For Your Domain to Brin, Page and Schmidt. Although that first meeting ended in frustration, it was only temporary.

"In May of the following year I brought it back to them, and said 'let's do a cloud-based hosted infrastructure for businesses [instead of a physical appliance] and start with Gmail, but as we have more applications we'll bring more apps into the suite,'" Sheth says.

Gmail For Your Domain launched in an invitation-only beta in February 2006, letting organizations -- mainly small businesses and universities -- use an entirely Web-based e-mail system with a personalized domain name.

The expanded launched later in 2006 and by February 2007 Google had created an enterprise version of Google Apps. Another key moment in 2007 was the acquisition of Postini, which helped Google incorporate spam filtering and virus blocking into the Apps suite.

Today, Google Apps includes Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites and several other applications in a cost-friendly package of $50 per user per year. The individual apps are still free to consumers.