"It was a hard road to get to the release of PGP. To add to the stress, a week before PGP's first release, I discovered the existence of another email encryption standard called Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM), which was backed by several big companies, as well as RSA Data Security. I fully expected PEM to crush PGP, and even briefly considered not releasing it. But I decided to press ahead, since I had come this far already, and besides, I knew that my design was better aligned with protecting the privacy of users," says Phil Zimmerman, as he offers a look back at the creation and early history of PGP.