Unlike the ubiquitous .zip format of the 90s, .7z was designed for . It utilized the LZMA (Lempel-Ziv-Markov chain algorithm), which allowed it to shrink files much more effectively than standard ZIP or RAR formats at the time. Key milestones in its history include:

It was built with an open-source architecture, allowing anyone to implement the format.

The "story" of the file format began in 1999 when it was introduced by Russian developer Igor Pavlov as the native format for his new, open-source file archiver, 7-Zip. The Evolution of .7z