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Uniform Resource Locator (URL) — describing its exact place on the internet. That link pops up in the inbox of the intended recipient, who then clicks on it to access its location on the internet.

“That was Megaupload,” says Dotcom — not some system designed to infringe copyright. “There is no question this was launched as a service to bypass email limitations.”

Dotcom had strategised the development and rollout, pitching the idea as a business over breakfast one morning. It went live in May 2005 and Dotcom had van der Kolk write a script to post Megaupload links of his street racing across car forums. “That is how it took off. On all these forums people would click on it and go: ‘Wow, that is a cool thing. I can just download it and watch it on my computer.’ The moment they click on the link they are of course on the Megaupload site and they learn about it and then they used it as well because there was nothing like it.”

Megaupload’s ease of use and the lack of a viable competitor generated a viral appeal. “Every time you send someone a link, or you post it on a forum,” says Dotcom, “another person learns about the service. They all need to click on the link, they are all coming to your site and wanting to use it themselves.”

And they did. Dotcom, one day, surprised himself realising: “Shit, this is going to be popular.” At that point, Ortmann’s greater technical abilities became critical to growing and maintaining the business. He reached out and Ortmann signed on. Dotcom: “We have doubled user numbers and bandwidth every single year for the whole seven years. And we would have continued to do that for a long time.”

Ortmann: “We never ever envisioned this useful but not really well known service to grow that fast.”

AT ITS SIMPLEST, Megaupload was built to carry loads far smaller than it eventually would. It had been designed to operate on 2005 infrastructure.

“It exploded in our faces,” says van der Kolk.

The idea worked from the start and as bandwidth prices fell and technology improved, it worked even more successfully. The business was launched, running advertisements as a means of generating income — it did not offer premium accounts until 2006.

Ortmann recalls the costs on launch being little more than a few hundred dollars. With the advertising pulling in revenue from visitors, “we were profitable from day one” — if only because those building the business took little from it.

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