Yahoo!
began as a student hobby and evolved into a global brand
that has changed the way people communicate with each
other, find and access information and purchase things.
The two founders of Yahoo!, David Filo and Jerry Yang,
Ph.D. candidates in Electrical Engineering at Stanford
University, started their guide in a campus trailer in
February 1994 as a way to keep track of their personal
interests on the Internet. Before long they were spending
more time on their home-brewed lists of favorite links
than on their doctoral dissertations. Eventually, Jerry
and David's lists became too long and unwieldy, and they
broke them out into categories. When the categories became
too full, they developed subcategories ... and the core
concept behind Yahoo! was born.
The
Web site started out as "Jerry and David's Guide
to the World Wide Web" but eventually received a
new moniker with the help of a dictionary. The name Yahoo!
is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious
Oracle," but Filo and Yang insist they selected the
name because they liked the general definition of a yahoo:
"rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." Yahoo! itself
first resided on Yang's student workstation, "Akebono,"
while the software was lodged on Filo's computer, "Konishiki"
- both named after legendary sumo wrestlers.
Jerry
and David soon found they were not alone in wanting a
single place to find useful Web sites. Before long, hundreds
of people were accessing their guide from well beyond
the Stanford trailer. Word spread from friends to what
quickly became a significant, loyal audience throughout
the closely-knit Internet community. Yahoo! celebrated
its first million-hit day in the fall of 1994, translating
to almost 100 thousand unique visitors.
Due
to the torrent of traffic and enthusiastic reception Yahoo!
was receiving, the founders knew they had a potential
business on their hands. In March 1995, the pair incorporated
the business and met with dozens of Silicon Valley venture
capitalists. They eventually came across Sequoia Capital,
the well-regarded firm whose most successful investments
included Apple Computer, Atari, Oracle and Cisco Systems.
They agreed to fund Yahoo! in April 1995 with an initial
investment of nearly $2 million.
Realizing
their new company had the potential to grow quickly, Jerry
and David began to shop for a management team. They hired
Tim Koogle, a veteran of Motorola and an alumnus of the
Stanford engineering department, as chief executive officer
and Jeffrey Mallett, founder of Novell's WordPerfect consumer
division, as chief operating officer. They secured a second
round of funding in Fall 1995 from investors Reuters Ltd.
and Softbank. Yahoo! launched a highly-successful IPO
in April 1996 with a total of 49 employees.
Today,
Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet communications,
commerce and media company that offers a comprehensive
branded network of services to more than 345 million individuals
each month worldwide. As the first online navigational
guide to the Web, www.yahoo.com is the leading guide in
terms of traffic, advertising, household and business
user reach. Yahoo! is the No. 1 Internet brand globally
and reaches the largest audience worldwide. The company
also provides online business and enterprise services
designed to enhance the productivity and Web presence
of Yahoo!'s clients. These services include Corporate
Yahoo!, a popular customized enterprise portal solution;
audio and video streaming; store hosting and management;
and Web site tools and services. The company's global
Web network includes 25 World properties. Headquartered
in Sunnyvale, Calif., Yahoo! has offices in Europe, Asia,
Latin America, Australia, Canada and the United States
[Source: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/misc/history.html].
Yahoo
acquired digital music website operator Launch Media for
$12M in cash on June 2001. The company has been renamed
Yahoo Music, however the radio division still keeps its
identity under theYahoo
Launch Launchcast Radio name.
Yahoo wants to showcase all its music products and services
under a single brand, the company said. The service already
has begun operating with a new logo. Yahoo
Music offers streaming audio, music
videos, Internet radio and news covering various genres
of music.
The
company recently formed Yahoo Media Group, putting together
several Yahoo properties, including games, news, sports,
finance, movies, and music services Yahoo Launch
and Musicmatch. Yahoos Launchcast
radio services was the highest-rated Webcasting service
online in January 2005, according to ratings firm Arbitron
and ComScore Media Metrix, attracting more than 2.2 million
people that month. However, Apple's dominance has been
challenged by other giants, ranging from Sony to Microsoft,
without substantially decreasing the iPod maker's market
share, even though iTunes has sold over 400 million legal
downloads by (March 2005) since its launch.
