Patent ID: 7475117

Claim:
A method implemented in a machine-accessible medium, comprising: sending, from a sender electronic mail (email) service using an extended email protocol, an email message constructed by a user within the user's environment to a recipient email service over a network; requesting, via the sender email service using the extended email protocol, of the recipient email service a prepare option, which is identified as a two-phase commit operation in the extended email protocol, the prepare operation to prepare the email for processing but having the recipient email service hold the email message and not deliver it to a recipient until a commit operation is received and at this time the recipient email service has the email message within a recipient's environment of the recipient, and wherein the recipient email service also uses the extended email protocol during interactions with the sender email service, and wherein the prepare option represents a first phase of a two-phase email commit process supported in the extended email protocol; and requesting of the recipient email service, via the sender email service, a commit option to deliver the email to the recipient within the environment, when the prepare option is successfully acknowledged from the recipient email service and when an abort is not desired, and wherein the email is sent from the recipient email service to the recipient in the recipient's environment over the network when the recipient email service receives the commit operation, and wherein the recipient email service just sends an acknowledgement for the prepare operation when the recipient email service can fulfill the commit operation and even before the commit operation is requested of the recipient email service and the recipient email service has the email message after receipt of the prepare operation but again does not deliver it to the recipient until the commit operation is received, and wherein the commit option represents a second phase of the two-phase email commit process supported in the extended email protocol that both the sender email service and the recipient email service use and support, wherein the extended email protocol is an extended version of Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), and wherein the prepare and commit operations are added to SMTP to create the extended SMTP protocol.