Yahoo!

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
This page has been semi-protected from editing
“Yahoo” redirects here. For other uses, see Yahoo (disambiguation).
Yahoo Inc.
Type Public (NASDAQ: YHOO)
Founded Flag of United States, Santa Clara, California (March 2, 1995)
Headquarters Sunnyvale, California, USA
Key people Terry Semel, Chairman & CEO
Jerry Yang (楊致遠), co-founder, Chief Yahoo!
David Filo, co-founder, Chief Yahoo!
Dan Rosensweig, COO
Susan Decker, CFO & EVP
Industry Internet services
Products (See complete products listing.)
Revenue $5.257 Billion USD (2005)
Net income $1.896 Billion USD (2005)
Employees 11,000 (2006)
Slogan Do you Yahoo!?
Website www.yahoo.com

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) is an American global Internet services company. It operates an Internet portal and provides a full range of products and services including a search engine, the Yahoo! Directory and Yahoo! Mail. It was founded by Stanford graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo in January of 1994 and incorporated on March 2, 1995. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.

According to Web trends companies among others Alexa Internet and Netcraft, Yahoo! has been the most visited website on the Internet with more than 412 million unique users. The global network of Yahoo! websites received 3.4 billion page views per day on average as of October 2005, making it one of the most visited U.S. websites.

Contents

History and growth

Current Yahoo! main page
Current Yahoo! main page
Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale
Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale

Early history (1994-1996)

In January 1994, Stanford graduate students Jerry Yang (楊致遠) and David Filo created a website named "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web". Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web was a directory of other web sites, organized in a hierarchy, as opposed to a searchable index of pages.

In April 1994, "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" was renamed "Yahoo!". Filo and Yang said they selected the name because they liked the word's general definition, as in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." The name can also be a backronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle".[1]

By the end of 1994, Yahoo! had already received one million hits. Yang and Filo realized their website had massive business potential, and on 2 March 1995, Yahoo! was incorporated.[2] On 12 April 1996, Yahoo! had its initial public offering, raising $33.8 million dollars, by selling 2.6 million shares at $13 each.

"Yahoo" had already been trademarked for barbecue sauce, knives (by EBSCO Industries) and human propelled watercraft (by Old Town Canoe Co.). Therefore, in order to get the trademark, Yang and Filo added the exclamation mark to the name.[3] However, the exclamation mark is often incorrectly omitted when referring to Yahoo!.

Growth (1997-1999)

Like many search engines and web directories, Yahoo! diversified into a Web portal. In the late 1990s, Yahoo!, MSN, Lycos, Excite and other Web portals were growing rapidly. Web portal providers rushed to acquire companies to expand their range of services, in the hope of increasing the time a user stays at the portal.

On 8 March 1997, Yahoo! acquired online communications company Four11. Four11's webmail service, Rocketmail, became Yahoo! Mail. Yahoo! also acquired ClassicGames.com and turned it into Yahoo! Games. Yahoo! then acquired direct marketing company Yoyodyne Entertainment, Inc. on 12 October 1998.[4] On 28 January 1999, Yahoo! acquired web hosting provider GeoCities. Another company Yahoo! acquired was eGroups, which became Yahoo! Groups after the acquisition on 28 June 2000. Yahoo! also launched Yahoo! Messenger on 21 July 1999.

When acquiring companies, Yahoo! often changed the relevant terms of service. For example, they claimed intellectual property rights for content on their servers, unlike the companies they acquired. As a result, many of the acquisitions were controversial and unpopular with users of the existing services.

Dot-com bubble (2000-2001)

On 3 January 2000, at the height of the Dot-com boom, Yahoo! stocks closed at an all-time high of $475.00 a share. 16 days later, shares in Yahoo! Japan became the first stocks in Japanese history to trade at over ¥100,000,000, reaching a price of 101.4 million yen ($962,140 at that time).[5]

On 7 February 2000, Yahoo.com was brought to a halt for a few hours as it was the victim of a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS).[6][7] On the next day, its shares rose about $16, or 4.5 percent as the failure was blamed on hackers rather than on an internal glitch, unlike a fault with eBay earlier that year.

During the dot-com boom, the cable news station CNBC also reported that Yahoo! and eBay were discussing a 50/50 merger.[8] Although the merger never materialized the two companies decided to form a marketing/advertising alliance six years later in 2006.[9]

On 26 June 2000, Yahoo! and Google signed an agreement which would make Google power searches made on yahoo.com.[10]

Post dot-com bubble (2002-2006)

Yahoo! was one of the few surviving large Internet companies after the dot-com bubble burst. Nevertheless, on September 26, 2001, Yahoo! stocks closed at an all-time low of $8.11.

Yahoo! formed partnerships with telecommunications and Internet providers to create content-rich broadband services to compete with AOL. On 3 June 2002, SBC and Yahoo! launched a national co-branded dial service.[11] In July 2003, BT Openworld announced an alliance with Yahoo![12] On 23 August 2005, Yahoo! and Verizon launched an integrated DSL service.[13]

In late 2002, Yahoo! began to bolster its search services by acquiring other search engines. In December 2002, Yahoo! acquired Inktomi, and in July 2003, it acquired Overture Services, Inc. and its subsidiaries AltaVista and AlltheWeb. On February 18, 2004, Yahoo! dropped Google-powered results and returned to using its own technology to provide search results.

Google then released Gmail, its webmail service offering 1 GB of storage, on 1 April 2004. Yahoo! responded by upgrading the storage of all free Yahoo! Mail accounts from 4 MB to 100 MB, and all Yahoo! Mail Plus accounts to 2 GB. On 9 July 2004, Yahoo! acquired e-mail provider Oddpost to add an Ajax interface to Yahoo! Mail Beta. Google also released Google Talk, a Voice over IP and instant messaging service, on 24 August 2005. On 13 October 2005, Yahoo! and Microsoft announced that Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger would become interoperable.

Yahoo! continued acquiring companies to expand its range of services, particularly Web 2.0 services. Yahoo! Launch became Yahoo! Music on 9 February 2005. On 20 March 2005, Yahoo! purchased photo sharing service Flickr.[14] On 29 March 2005, the company launched its blogging and social networking service Yahoo! 360°.[15] In June 2005, Yahoo! acquired blo.gs, a service based on RSS feed aggregation. Yahoo! then bought online social event calendar Upcoming.org on 4 October 2005. Yahoo! acquired social bookmark site del.icio.us on 9 December 2005 and then playlist sharing community webjay on 9 January 2006.

The future (2007-)

Yahoo! Next is an incubation ground for future Yahoo! technologies currently in their beta testing phase. It contains forums for Yahoo! users to give feedback to assist in the development of these future Yahoo! technologies.

Products and services

Main article: List of Yahoo!-owned sites and services

Yahoo! provides a wide array of internet services that cater to most online activities. It operates the web portal http://www.yahoo.com which provides contents including the latest news, Yahoo! Finance and gives users quick access to other Yahoo! services like Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Maps, Yahoo! Groups and Yahoo! Messenger.

Search

Yahoo! Search is the second largest search engine on the internet, Yahoo! also provides vertical search services such as Yahoo! Image, Yahoo! Video, Yahoo! Local, Yahoo! News, and Yahoo! Shopping Search.

Communication

Yahoo! provides internet communication services such as Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Mail is the largest e-mail service in the world. Yahoo! also offers social networking services and user-generated content in products such as My Web, Yahoo! Personals, Yahoo! 360º, Yahoo! Photos, and Flickr.

Content

Yahoo! partners with hundreds of premier content providers in products such as Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Music, Yahoo! Movies, Yahoo! News, and Yahoo! Games to provide media contents and news. Yahoo! also provides a personalization service My Yahoo!, which enables users to collect their favorite Yahoo! features, content feeds, and information into a single page.

Yahoo! has developed partnerships with different broadband providers such as SBC, Verizon, Bellsouth, Rogers Canada and British Telecom, offering a range of free and premium Yahoo! content and services to subscribers.

Mobile

Yahoo! Mobile includes services for on-the-go messaging, such as email, instant messaging, and moblogging; information, such as search and alerts; and fun and games, including ringtones, mobile games, and Yahoo! Photos for camera phones.

OneSearch

Yahoo introduced its Internet search system, called oneSearch, developed for mobile phones on March 20, 2007. The company's officials stated that in distinction from ordinary Web search Yahoo's new service presents a list of actual information, which may include: news headlines, images from Yahoo's Flickr photos site, business listings, local weather and links to other sites. Instead of showing only, for example, popular movies or some critical reviews, oneSearch lists local theaters that at the moment are playing a certain movie, user ratings and news headlines regarding the movie. A zip code or city name is required for Yahoo oneSearch to start delivering local search results. The results of a Web search are listed on a single page and are prioritized into categories. The list of results is based on calculations that Yahoo computers make on a certain information the user is trying to make.[16]

Commerce

Yahoo! offers commerce services such as Yahoo! Shopping, Yahoo! Autos, Yahoo! Auctions, and Yahoo! Travel, which enables users to gather relevant information and make commercial transactions and purchases online.

Small Business

Yahoo! provides services such as Yahoo! Domains, Yahoo! Web Hosting, Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, Yahoo! Business Email, and Yahoo! Store to small business owners and professionals allowing them to build their own online stores using Yahoo!'s tools.

Yahoo! also offers HotJobs to help recruiters find the talent they seek.

Advertising

Yahoo! Search Marketing provides services such as Sponsored Search, Local Advertising, and Product/Travel/Directory Submit that let different businesses advertise their products and services in the Yahoo! network. Yahoo! Publisher Network is an advertising tool for online publishers to place advertisements relevant to their content to monetize their websites.[17]

Yahoo! launched its new Internet advertisement sales system on February 5, 2007 called Panama. It allows advertisers to bid for search terms based on their popularity to display their ads on search results pages. The system takes bids, ad quality, click-through rates and other factors into consideration in determining how ads are ranked on search results pages. Through Panama, Yahoo! aims to provide more relevant search results to users, a better overall experience, as well as increase monetization -- to earn more from the ads it show [18]

Revenue model

Yahoo!'s revenue comes from online advertising. The largest segment of it comes from search advertising, where advertisers bid for search terms to display their ads on the search results, on average Yahoo! makes 2.5 cents to 3 cents from each search. With the new search advertising system "Panama" Yahoo! aims to increase revenue generated from search.[19]

Other forms of advertising which bring in revenue for Yahoo! include display and contextual advertising.[citation needed]

Important events

Yahoo! logo with new color scheme
Yahoo! logo with new color scheme

Criticism and controversy

Yahoo! paid inclusion controversy

In March 2004, Yahoo! launched a paid inclusion program whereby commercial websites are guaranteed listings on the Yahoo search engine after payment. This scheme is lucrative, but has proved unpopular both with website marketers (who are reluctant to pay), and the public (who are unhappy about the paid-for listings being indistinguishable from other search results). As of Oct 2006, Paid Inclusion doesn't guarantee any commercial listing, it only helps the paid inclusion customers, by crawling their site more often and by providing some statistics on the searches that led to the page and some additional smart links (provided by customers as feeds) below the actual url.

Yahoo! has also been criticized for funding spyware and adware — advertising from Yahoo!'s clients often appears on-screen in pop-ups generated from adware that a user may have installed on their computer without realizing it by accepting online offers to download software to fix computer clocks or improve computer security, add browser enhancements, etc. Similarly, Yahoo! has received adverse comment for bundling their Yahoo! toolbar with other software (Macromedia Flash 8 is an example) with installation being the default setting. The toolbar itself has been noted as taking up a lot of screen-space when installed. Also, Windows users will find themselves unable to uninstall the toolbar by normal means on Internet Explorer. It can, however, be uninstalled normally on Firefox.

Work in China

Yahoo!, along with Google China, Microsoft, Cisco, AOL, Skype, Nortel and others, has cooperated with the Chinese government in implementing a system of internet censorship in mainland China.

Many critics of these corporate policies argue that it is wrong for companies to profit from censorship and restrictions on freedom of the press and freedom of speech.

Human rights advocates such as Human Rights Watch and media groups such as Reporters Without Borders point out that if companies would stop contributing to the authorities' censorship efforts, the government could be forced to change.

Chinese blogger imprisonment controversy

In April 2005, Shi Tao, a journalist working for a Chinese newspaper, was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Changsha Intermediate People's Court of Hunan Province, China (First trial case no 29), for "providing state secrets to foreign entities". The "secret", as Shi Tao's family claimed, refers to a brief list of censorship orders he sent from a Yahoo! Mail account to the Asia Democracy Forum before the anniversary of Tiananmen Square Incident.[28]

The verdict stated Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) confirmed that an IP address, registered by a Hunan newspaper that Shi Tao worked for, accessed to the mail account at a particular time. He had sent the message through an anonymous Yahoo! account, but police had gone straight to his offices and picked him up. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is concerned with the ease with which Mr. Shi had been caught. In April 2006, Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) is under investigation by Hong Kong's Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data.

Criticism of Yahoo! intensified when the court document stated the company aided Chinese authorities in the case of dissident Li Zhi. In December 2003 Li Zhi was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment for "inciting subversion".

In recent months, Yahoo! has also followed the directive of United States government officials in turning over information which the United States deems as key for continuing its global war on terror. Yahoo! contends it must respect the laws of governments in jurisdictions where it is operating.

On 2 June 2006, the union representing journalists in the UK and Ireland (NUJ) called on its 40,000 members to boycott all Yahoo! Inc. products and services to protest the Internet company's reported actions in China.[29]

Chatrooms and message boards

As a result of media scrutiny relating to Internet child predators and a lack of significant ad revenues, Yahoo's "user created" chatrooms were closed down in June 2005.[30] Yahoo! News' message board section was closed on December 19, 2006[31] due to the trolling phenomenon.

Image search

On May 25, 2006, Yahoo!'s image search was criticized for bringing up sexually explicit images even when SafeSearch was on. This was discovered by a teacher who was intending to use the service with a class to search for "www". Yahoo!'s response to this was, "Yahoo! is aware of this issue and is working to resolve it as quickly as possible".[32]

Trivia

There is an Easter Egg on the Yahoo! homepage. If you click the exclamation point in the Yahoo! logo, the famous Yahoo! yodel will play.

See also

Notes and references

  1. ^ http://docs.yahoo.com/info/misc/history.html
  2. ^ http://www.americanheritage.com/events/articles/web/20060412-yahoo-internet-search-engine-jerry-yang-david-filo-america-online-google-ipo-email.shtml
  3. ^ http://blog.cre8asite.net/bwelford/archives/date/2004/04/
  4. ^ http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,15555,00.html
  5. ^ http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/print.php/289851
  6. ^ http://www.dennismoran.org/media/stacks.msnbc.com/news/376219.html
  7. ^ http://news.com.com/2100-1023-236621.html?legacy=cnet
  8. ^ http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,34967,00.html
  9. ^ http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060525/ap_on_hi_te/yahoo_ebay
  10. ^ http://www.google.com/googlefriends/alert2_2000.html
  11. ^ http://www.sbc.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=20046
  12. ^ http://www.groupbt.com/News/Articles/ShowArticle.cfm?ArticleID=fa2aec1b-0336-4b33-8d7e-85900c10ea33
  13. ^ http://newscenter.verizon.com/proactive/newsroom/release.vtml?id=92803
  14. ^ http://blog.flickr.com/flickrblog/2005/03/yahoo_actually_.html
  15. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo%21_360%C2%BA
  16. ^ http://www.usb4ever.com/yahoo-gets-ahead-of-google-p.html
  17. ^ http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/overview.cfm
  18. ^ http://searchengineland.com/070205-090623.php
  19. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/05/technology/05yahoo.html?ex=1328331600&en=7c66de3983c44830&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
  20. ^ http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,15555,00.html Wired.com
  21. ^ http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/print.php/289851 Internetnews
  22. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/635444.stm news.bbc.co.uk
  23. ^ http://news.com.com/2100-1023-236621.html?legacy=cnet news.bbc.com
  24. ^ Press Release http://newscenter.verizon.com/proactive/newsroom/release.vtml?id=92803 Press Release Newscenter.verizon.com
  25. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4221538.stm News.bbc.co.uk
  26. ^ http://yodel.yahoo.com/2007/01/08/bloggers-unite-yahoo-joins-forces-with-mybloglog/
  27. ^ http://searchengineland.com/070205-090623.php
  28. ^ http://www.wmd.org/democracynews/may1102sup.html wmd.org
  29. ^ http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060602/wr_nm/media_yahoo_nuj_dc_5 News.yahoo.com
  30. ^ http://news.com.com/Yahoo+closes+chat+rooms+over+child+sex+concerns/2100-1025_3-5759705.html News.com
  31. ^ http://news.yahoo.com/page/messageboards News.yahoo.com
  32. ^ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/25/yahoo_school_project/ Theregister.co.uk

External links

Yahoo! Inc.
v • d • e

Exhaustive list of products and services

Advertising: Panama • Search Marketing • Yahoo! Publisher Network

Developer Networks/Resources: Yahoo! Gallery • Yahoo! Developer Network


Search: WWW • Podcasts • flickr • Finance • Kelkoo • Directory • LAUNCHcast • HotJobs • Groups • Maps • News • Video • blo.gs

Communication & Publishing: flickr • del.icio.us • Answers • Mail • GeoCities • Messenger • Voice • Yahoo! 360° • Mobile • Photos • upcoming.org • Jumpcut.com

Computer Applications: Widget Engine • Desktop Search • Messenger • Music Jukebox • The All-Seeing Eye


Annual Revenue: $5.257 Billion USD (2005) • Employees: 11,000 (2006)

Stock Symbol: (NASDAQ: YHOO), (LSE: YAH) • Website: www.yahoo.com

v • d • e
Major computing companies

Hardware companies: Acer - Apple - Alcatel-Lucent - AMD - ASUS - Cisco - Dell - Freescale - Fujitsu Siemens Computers - Infineon - Intel - Juniper - Lenovo - LG - Matsushita - Motorola - NEC - Nokia - Nortel Networks - NVIDIA - NXP - Philips - Qimonda - Qualcomm - Samsung - Sony - STMicroelectronics - Texas Instruments - Toshiba -VIA
Software companies: Adobe - CA - Oracle - Red Hat - SAP
Hardware/software companies: Apple - EMC - Fujitsu - Hitachi - HP - IBM - Microsoft - NetApp - Siemens - Sun - Thomson
Dot-com Companies: Amazon.com - AOL - eBay - Google - Yahoo!
Technology Consulting companies: Accenture - Atos Origin  - Bearing Point  - Capgemini - Cognizant - CSC - EDS - HCL Technologies - Infosys - LogicaCMG - Satyam - TCS - Wipro

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../y/a/h/Yahoo%21.html"