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(May 2012)
Jerry Yang and David Filo, the founders of Yahoo.
In January 1994, Yang and Filo were
electrical engineering graduate students at
Stanford University when they created a website named "Jerry's guide to the world wide web".
[8] David and Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web was a directory of other websites, organized in a hierarchy, as opposed to a searchable index of pages. In March 1994, "David and Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" was renamed "Yahoo!"
[9][10] The "yahoo.com" domain was created on January 18, 1995.
[11]
The word "yahoo" is an
acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle"
[12] The term "hierarchical" described how the Yahoo database was arranged in layers of subcategories. The term "oracle" was intended to mean "source of truth and wisdom," and the term "officious," rather than being related to the word's normal meaning, described the many office workers who would use the Yahoo database while surfing from work.
[13] However, Filo and Yang insist they mainly selected the name because they liked the slang definition of a "yahoo" (used by college students in David Filo's native Louisiana in the late 1980s and early 1990s to refer to an unsophisticated, rural Southerner): "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." Filo's college girlfriend often referred to Filo as a "yahoo." This meaning derives from the name of a race of
fictional beings from Gulliver's Travels.
Yahoo grew rapidly throughout the 1990s. Like many
search engines and
web directories, Yahoo added a
web portal. It also made many high-profile acquisitions. Its stock price skyrocketed during the
dot-com bubble, Yahoo stocks closing at an all-time high of $118.75 a share on January 3, 2000. However, after the dot-com bubble
burst, it reached a post-bubble low of $4.05 on September 26, 2001.
In 2000, Yahoo began using
Google for search. Over the next four years, it developed its own search technologies, which it began using in 2004. Yahoo revamped its mail service to compete with Google's
Gmail in 2007. The company struggled through 2008, with several large layoffs.
In February 2008,
Microsoft Corporation made an unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo for USD $44.6 billion. Yahoo formally rejected the bid, claiming that it "substantially undervalues" the company and was not in the interest of its shareholders. Three years later, Yahoo had a market capitalization of USD $22.24 billion.
[14] Carol Bartz replaced Yang as CEO in January 2009.
[15] In September 2011, she was removed from her position at Yahoo by the company's chairman Roy Bostock, and CFO
Tim Morse was named as Interim CEO of the company.
In early 2012, after the appointment of
Scott Thompson as CEO, rumors began to spread about looming layoffs. Several key executives, such as Chief Product Officer
Blake Irving left.
[16] On April 4, 2012, Yahoo announced a cut of 2,000 jobs or about 14 percent of its 14,100 workers. The cut is expected to save around $375 million annually after the layoffs are completed at end of 2012.
[17] In an email sent to employees in April 2012, Thompson reiterated his view that customers should come first at Yahoo. He also completely reorganized the company.
[18]
On May 13, 2012, Yahoo issued a press release stating that Thompson was no longer with the company, and would immediately be replaced on an interim basis by
Ross Levinsohn, recently appointed head of Yahoo's new Media group.
[18][19][20] Thompson's total compensation for his 130-day tenure with Yahoo was at least $7.3 million.
[21]
In June 2012, Yahoo hired former Google director, Michael Barrett as its Chief Revenue Officer.
[22]
[edit] Products and services
The front page of the Yahoo website, in November 2011.
Main article:
List of Yahoo!-owned sites and services
Yahoo operates a portal that provides the latest news, entertainment, and sports information. The portal also gives users access to other Yahoo services like Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Maps,
Yahoo Finance,
Yahoo Groups and
Yahoo Messenger.
[edit] Storing personal information and tracking usage
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(June 2012)
Working with
comScore,
The New York Times found that Yahoo was able to collect far more data about users than its competitors from its websites and advertising network. By one measure, on average Yahoo had the potential in December 2007 to build a profile of 2,500 records per month about each of its visitors.
[23] Yahoo retains search requests for a period of 13 months. However, in response to European regulators, Yahoo scrambles the IP address of users after three months by deleting its last eight bits.
[24]
On March 29, 2012, Yahoo announced that it would introduce a "
Do Not Track" feature that summer, allowing users to opt out of web-visit tracking and customized ads.
[25]
According to a 2008 article in
Computerworld, Yahoo has a 2-petabyte, specially built
data warehouse that it uses to analyze the behavior of its half-billion Web visitors per month, processing 24 billion daily events.
[26] In contrast the
US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) database of all US taxpayers weighs in at only 150 terabytes.
[26]
[edit] Communication
Yahoo provides Internet communication services such as
Yahoo Messenger and
Yahoo Mail. As of May 2007, its e-mail service would offer unlimited storage.
[27]
Yahoo provided social networking services and user-generated content, including products such as
My Web,
Yahoo Personals,
Yahoo 360°,
Delicious,
Flickr, and
Yahoo Buzz. Yahoo closed
Yahoo Buzz,
MyBlogLog, and numerous other products on April 21, 2011.
[28]
Yahoo Photos was closed on September 20, 2007, in favor of Flickr. On October 16, 2007, Yahoo announced that it would discontinue Yahoo 360°, including
bug repairs; the company explained that in 2008 it would instead establish a "universal profile" similar to the
Yahoo Mash experimental system.
[29]
[edit] Content
Yahoo partners with numerous content providers in products such as
Yahoo Sports,
Yahoo Finance,
Yahoo Music,
Yahoo Movies,
Yahoo Weather,
Yahoo News,
Yahoo Answers and
Yahoo Games to provide news and related content. Yahoo provides a personalization service,
My Yahoo!, which enables users to combine their favorite Yahoo features, content feeds and information onto a single page.
On March 31, 2008, Yahoo launched Shine, a site tailored for women seeking online information and advice between the ages of 25 and 54.
[30]
[edit] Co-branded Internet services
Yahoo developed partnerships with broadband providers such as
AT&T Inc. (via
BellSouth & SBC),
Verizon Communications,
Rogers Communications and
British Telecom, offering a range of free and premium Yahoo content and services to subscribers.[
specify][
vague][
citation needed]
[edit] Mobile Services
Yahoo! Mobile offers services for email, instant messaging, and
mobile blogging, as well as information services, searches and alerts. Servies for the camera phone include entertainment and ring tones.
Yahoo introduced its Internet search system, called
OneSearch, fo