In January 1994, Jerry Yang and David
Filo were electrical engineering graduate students at Stanford University when
they created a website named "Jerry's guide to the world wide
web".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 April 1994, "David and Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web"
was renamed "Yahoo!" The "yahoo.com" domain was created on January 18, 1995.
The word "yahoo" is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical
Officious Oracle" The term "hierarchical" described how the
Yahoo! database was arranged in directory layers. 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. 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! diversified into 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 settled at a post-bubble
low of $4.05 on September 26, 2001.
In 2000, Yahoo! began using Google for search results. Over the next four
years, it developed its own search technologies, which it began using in 2004.
Yahoo! also 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" Yahoo! and was not in the interest of
its shareholders. Three years later, Yahoo! had a stock market capitalization
of USD $22.24 billion. Carol Bartz replaced cofounder Jerry Yang in January
2009. 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 the new CEO, many
rumors spread about large layoffs looming. Several key executives, such as
Chief Product Officer Blake Irving left Yahoo!. On April 4, 2012, Yahoo
announced a cut of 2,000 jobs or about 14 percent of 14,100 workers employed by
Yahoo!. The cut is expected to save around $375 million annually after the layoffs
are completed at end of 2012. In an email memo sent to employees in April 2012,
Scott Thompson re-iterated his view that customers should come first at Yahoo!.
He also completely re-organized the company.
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.
Thompson's total compensation for his 130-day tenure with Yahoo! will be at
least $7.3 million.
In June 2012, Yahoo! hired former Google director, Michael Barrett as its
Chief Revenue Officer.
Source : wikipedia.com
Source : wikipedia.com
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