History of Yahoo! search engine

Yahoo! Which started up in January 1994 was one of the earliest search engine services.

It was founded by David Filo and Jerry Yang, Ph.D. candidates in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. Initially, Yahoo! was only providing a browsing directory, organizing web pages into categories which were classified by human editors.

Yahoo! was founded as ‘Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web’. It was renamed as Yahoo in April 1994. Yahoo! is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle."

As the web grew, a number of search engines appeared, Most used some sort of automated program to ‘crawl’ though the websites and extract keywords. Yahoo! used automation too but its index was assembled by Yang and Filo personally at first, later supplemented by other people.

In April 1995, Yahoo! Was funded with an initial investment of nearly $2 million USD by Sequoia Capital. Yahoo! launched a highly-successful IPO in April 1996 with a total of 49 employees. The company was valued at $850 million.

During the period of 1995 to 2001, Yahoo! Made a number of acquisitions diversifying its product an service offerings.

Among many other acquisitions Yahoo acquired four11, an online communications company, creating the so called Yahoo! Mail, then bought ClassicGames.com and turned it into Yahoo Games.

In July 2009 Yahoo and Microsoft announced that they combining their efforts in the area of internet searching.
History of Yahoo! search engine

History of Yahoo!

History of Yahoo!
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. At this time who would ever guessed that this humble beginning would evolve into a global brand.

Initially the name was “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web” but was renamed as Yahoo in April 1994. Yahoo! is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle." In April 1995, Sequoia Capital agreed to fund Yahoo! with an initial investment of nearly $2 million. Yahoo! launched a highly-successful IPO in April 1996 with a total of 49 employees.

On 8 March 1997, Yahoo! acquired online communications company Four11. Four11's webmail service, Rocketmail, became Yahoo! Mail. In December 2002, Yahoo! acquired Inktomi. 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.

The company also provides online business and enterprise services designed to enhance the productivity and Web presence of Yahoo!'s clients. According to Web traffic analysis companies, the domain yahoo.com attracted at least 1.575 billion visitors annually by 2008.
History of Yahoo!