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Yahoo! Wikipedia RSS Feed
shared by wikipedia into yahoo Bio 2 years ago
Topic blinked on Apr 08, 2006 12:49 pm
Yahoo! Inc. is an American computer services company with a mission to "be the most essential global Internet service for consumers and businesses". It operates an Internet portal, the Yahoo! Directory and a host of other services including the popular Yahoo! Mail. It was founded by Stanford graduate students David Filo and Jerry Yang in January 1994 and incorporated on March 2, 1995. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.
According to Alexa Internet and Netcraft, both of which are Web trends companies, Yahoo! is the most visited website on the Internet today. The global network of Yahoo! websites received 3.4 billion page views per day on average as of October 2005.
History
Yahoo! started out as "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" but eventually received a new moniker with the help of a dictionary. "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle" is a backronym for "yahoo!", but Filo and Yang insist they selected the name because they liked the word's general definition, as in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth."1 (For this reason the word "Yahoo!" should be pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable.) 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. The "yet another" phrasing goes back at least to the Unix utility yacc, whose name is an acronym for "yet another compiler compiler".
Yahoo! had its initial public offering on April 12, 1996, selling 2.6 million shares at $13 each.
As Yahoo's popularity has increased, so has the range of features it offers, making it a kind of one-stop shop for all the popular activities of the Internet. These now include: Yahoo! Mail, a Web-based e-mail service, an instant messaging client, a very popular mailing list service (Yahoo! Groups), online gaming and chat, various news and information portals, online shopping and auction facilities. Many of these are based at least in part on previously independent services, which Yahoo has acquired - such as the popular GeoCities free Web-hosting service, Rocketmail, and various competing mailing list providers such as eGroups. Many of these take-overs were controversial and unpopular with users of the existing services, as Yahoo! often changed the relevant terms of service. An example of this would be their claiming intellectual property rights for the content on their servers, which the original companies had not done.
At the pinnacle of the Internet boom in the year 2000, the cable news station CNBC reported that Yahoo! Inc. and eBay were in discussions to initiate a 50/50 merger 2.
Yahoo! has partnerships with telecommunications and Internet providers - such as BT in the UK, Rogers in Canada and SBC ,Verizon BellSouth in the US - to create content-rich broadband services to rival those offered by AOL. The company offers a branded credit card, ''Yahoo! Visa'', through a partnership with First USA.ÿ788ÿÿ789ÿBeginning in late 2002, Yahoo! began to bolster its search services by acquiring relevant companies. 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.ÿ790ÿÿ791ÿAs of 2005 Yahoo!'s news message boards have gained something of a cult following. Attached to every story is a discussion board, yet rarely are the posts pertinent to the story. Often, the posts are deliberately outrageous, attempting to provoke angry responses which, in turn, lead to more offensive posts and so on. No news story, however sacrosanct, is spared.ÿ792ÿÿ793ÿIn June 2005 Yahoo! acquired blo.gs, a service based on RSS feed aggregation, primarily from weblogs (hence the name), which produces a simple list (and also an RSS feed thereof) of freshly updated Weblogs, ordered according to recentness of update. blo.gs was the first Internet company hosted on a domain hack Yahoo! acquired, del.icio.us being the second.ÿ794ÿÿ622ÿControversyÿ623ÿ
ÿ795ÿIn 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". He had passed details of a censorship order to the Asia Democracy Forum and the website [http://www.wmd.org/democracynews/may1102sup.html Democracy News. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) investigated the case, specifically the ease with which Mr Shi had been caught. He had sent the message through an anonymous Yahoo! account. But police had gone straight to his offices and picked him up. RSF later obtained a translation of the verdict which stated that Mr Shi's account information, telephone number and address were "furnished by Yahoo! Holdings".
Criticism of Yahoo! intensified when Reporters Without Borders claimed translated court documents proved 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 February 2006, Yahoo! also announced their decision (along with AOL) to give users the option to "certify" outgoing mail. That is, to, by paying up to one cent for each outgoing mail, allowing the mail in question to avoid spam filters. This decision is opposed by people that claim it to be a "tax on speech", which would eventually restrict freedom of speech as companies implementing similar decision would be tempted to increase the amount of mail classified as spam in order to encourage users to pay, preventing non-profit organizations to freely communicate with their members, among other things. However a large number of non-profit organisations, such as the Red Cross have signed up to the program.
Important events
Please note that this list is merely partial.
*February 1994: Jerry Yang and David Filo create "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" while studying at Stanford University.
*April 1994: "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" is re-named "Yahoo!"
*March 1995: Yahoo! is incorporated.
*1995: Ziff Davis Inc. launches the magazine Yahoo! Internet Life, initially as ZD Internet Life. The magazine was meant to accompany and complement the web site.
*April 12 1996: Yahoo has Initial public offering.
*January 19 2000: At the height of the Dot-com tech bubble, 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). 3
*February 7 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). 4 5. 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.
*June 3, 2002: SBC and Yahoo! Launch National Co-Branded Dial Service -- Press Release
*December 2002: Yahoo! Inc. starts acquisition of Inktomi Web search engine
*July, 2003: BT Openworld announces an alliance with Yahoo! -- Press Release
*July 2003, Acquires Overture Services, Inc.
*January 19 2004: Yahoo! Inc. announces the formation of Yahoo! Research Labs, a research organization focusing on the invention of new technologies and solutions for Yahoo!. Yahoo's Head and Principal Scientist, Dr. Gary William Flake, leads the new organization. Dr. Flake has since left the company and now works at Microsoft.
*February 19 2004: Yahoo! dropped Google-powered results, returning to its own algorithm and index after it had used Google's results for a long time.
*March 2004: Yahoo! launches its own search engine technology.
*March 1 2004: Yahoo! announces (as cited in the New York Times article listed in the "References" section) that it will practice paid inclusion for its search service. However, it also announced it would continue to rely mainly on a free web crawl for most of its search engine content.
*March 25 2004: Yahoo! acquires the European shopping search engine Kelkoo.
*July 9, 2004 Yahoo! acquires email provider Oddpost.com 6.
*December 15 2004: Yahoo! launches beta version of its video search engine.
*February 9 2005 Yahoo! Launch is changed to Yahoo! Music, which still provides free music.
*February 15 2005 Yahoo! establishes its European Headquarters in Dublin, Ireland with the creation of 400 new jobs. 7
*February 28 2005 Yahoo! launches a developer network giving an API to most of its search verticals.
*March 2 2005 Yahoo! completes 10 years of corporate existence. Gives out free ice cream coupons at Baskin Robbins to its users to celebrate its "birthday."
*March 20, 2005 Yahoo! acquires photo sharing service Flickr 8
*March 29, 2005 Yahoo! launch blogging and social networking service Yahoo! 360 9
*April 7, 2005 Wikimedia Foundation announces Yahoo! support 10
*May 26, 2005 Yahoo! announces its new PhotoMail service
*June 14, 2005 Yahoo! acquires VoIP provider DialPad Communications.
*July 15, 2005 Yahoo! announces Yahoo! Research Lab - Berkeley (YRLB)
*July 25, 2005 Yahoo! acquires widget engine Konfabulator
*August 11, 2005 Yahoo! acquires 40% of Alibaba.com for $1 billion US, and Alibaba will take over operation of Yahoo! China. 11
*August 23, 2005: Verizon and Yahoo! Launch Integrated DSL Service -- Press Release
*September 7, 2005. Yahoo! supplies information to People's Republic of China which then jails reporter Shi Tao, age 37, for 10 years. Yahoo! states that they were following Chinese law. 12
*October 4, 2005 Yahoo! purchases online social event calendar Upcoming.org. 13
*October 17, 2005 Yahoo! buys British company Whereonearth Ltd which provides location technology.
*November 15, 2005 The sports section of My Yahoo! is hacked; titles such as "selfhood + conscience" and "aesthetic freedom" link to various pages at doublereflection.org .
*December 8/ (US time) 9, (Australian time) 2005 Yahoo! 7 announced for January 2006. Official Site
*December 9, 2005 Yahoo! acquires del.icio.us.
*January 9, 2006 Yahoo! acquires webjay
Yahoo! Research Labs
Yahoo! has 3 research labs:
* Berkeley, California in association with the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California, Berkeley.
* Burbank, California (moved from Pasadena, California in November 2005).
* Sunnyvale, California.
Yahoo! Next
Yahoo! Next is essentially incubation ground for future Yahoo! technologies in their beta testing phase. A chance for the Yahoo! community to interact and have a say, on how upcoming products are designed and fine tuned. Each prototype can be discussed in its own individual Yahoo! Next forum.
Yahoo! Next
See also
*List of search engines
*Yahoo! trolling phenomena
*GAMEY
* Official website
* Corporate milestones
* The History of Yahoo! - How It All Started...
* Yahoo! Next
Yahoo!-owned sites and services
This is a partial, alphabetized list. For a complete listing of the services see List of Yahoo! services.
* webjay playlist sharing community http://www.webjay.org/
* del.icio.us – popular social bookmarking site, http://del.icio.us/
* blo.gs – a directory of recently updated weblogs, http://blo.gs/
* Dialpad – a phone company, http://www.dialpad.com/
* Flickr – popular photo sharing site, http://flickr.com/
* upcoming.org – Social event calendar driven by people, http://www.upcoming.org/
* GeoCities – free free web hosting service, http://geocities.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! 360º – free blogging and social networking service, http://360.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! 7 joint entity with Seven Network Australia, http://yahoo7.com.au
* Yahoo! Answers – http://answers.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Ask – http://ask.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Autos – http://autos.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Autos Custom – http://autos.yahoo.com/custom
* Yahoo! Assistant
* Yahoo! Briefcase – free file hosting service, http://briefcase.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Broadway – http://broadway.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Developer Network – resources for software developers using Yahoo! technologies and Web services, http://developer.yahoo.net/
* Yahoo! Directory – hierarchical directory of web-sites, http://dir.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Finance – stock exchange rates and other financial information, http://finance.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Games – playing games (i. e. on-line against other users), http://games.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Groups – mailing lists, http://groups.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! HotJobs – http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Mail – web-based email, http://mail.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Maps – http://maps.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Messenger – http://messenger.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Mobile – http://mobile.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Music – Music videos and internet radio (LAUNCHcast). http://music.yahoo.com/ and Yahoo! Music Engine.
* Yahoo! News – news updates and top stories at Yahoo! News, including world, national, business, entertainment, sports, weather, technology, and weird news. – http://news.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Personals – http://personals.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Photos – http://photos.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Publisher Network – advertising network
* Yahoo! Real Estate – http://realestate.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Search – websearch, http://search.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Search Marketing (Overture) – http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Shopping – shopping search & compare, http://shopping.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Small Business – domains, web hosting and ecommerce services, http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Sports – scores, stats, and fantasy games, http://sports.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Travel – travel guides, booking and reservation, http://travel.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! TV – TV listings, scheduling recordings on Tivo box remotely http://tv.yahoo.com/
* Yahoo! Widgets – a cross-platform desktop widget runtime environment, formerly called Konfabulator
* Yahooligans! – Children's version of the web portal. – http://www.yahooligans.com/
* Kelkoo – Shopping search engine in 10 European Countries – http://www.kelkoo.com/
Information about Yahoo!
*yahoo.weblogsinc.com - The Unofficial Yahoo! Weblog
*Job interviews at Yahoo! - employees and job seekers share information on Yahoo! interview process
*The Search Engine Relevancy Challenge Results – A search engine that compares search relevancy by letting users rank results from several major search engines including Yahoo!
*Mail & Guardian online (South Africa) – Watchdog says Yahoo! gave data on jailed journalist to Chinese government.
* Yahoo! Security Center - Guide to Online Security
Opposition to Yahoo!
*Why Yahoo's search results cannot be trusted - Opposition to Yahoo!'s pay-for-placement search results
*Yahoo! Watch
*BooYahoo!
Category:Companies based in California
Category:Companies traded on NASDAQ
Category:Internet companies of the United States
Category:Internet search engines
Category:Websites
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The Wikipedia article is licensed under http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html and uses material from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!. A preview of this article is available at http://www.blinkbits.com/en_wikifeeds/Yahoo!.... Read more...
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