Yahoo! Inc. Article Index for
Yahoo! 		Articles about
Yahoo! 		 

Information About

Yahoo! Inc.
APPAREL
BABY
BEAUTY
BOOKS
CAR TOYS
CELL PHONES
DVD'S
ELECTRONICS
GOURMET FOOD
GROCERIES
HEALTH & PERSONAL
HOME & GARDEN
JEWELRY
MUSIC
MUSIC INSTRUMENTS
OFFICE PRODUCTS
SOFTWARE
SPORTING GOODS
TOOLS & HARDWARE
TOYS
VIDEO GAMES
SHOPPING HOME
MORE SHOPPING...



  Company Logo
  Company Type Public ( NASDAQ : YHOO )
  Company Slogan N/A
  Foundation Santa Clara, California (March 2, 1995)
  Location Sunnyvale, California
  Industry Internet services
  Key People Terry Semel , Chairman & CEO <br /> Jerry Yang , Chief Yahoo<br /> David Filo , Chief Yahoo<br /> Dan Rosensweig , COO <br /> Susan Decker , CFO & EVP
  Num Employees 9,800 ( 2005 )
  Products ( See Complete Products Listing )
  Revenue $5257 Billion USD ( 2005 )
  Net Income $1896 Billion USD ( 2005 )


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 of 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", a web site featuring a directory of other sites, organized in a hierarchy (rather than a searchable index of pages). It was renamed "Yahoo!" shortly thereafter. " Workstation , " Akebono ," while the Software was lodged on Filo's computer, " Konishiki ", both named after legendary Sumo Wrestler s. 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 , raising $33.8 million dollars, by 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. {Link without Title}

Yahoo! has partnerships with 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 .

Beginning 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.

As 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, is spared.

In 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.


CRITICISM AND CONTROVERSY


The Yahoo! Holdings 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 order he sent from a Yahoo! Mail account to the Asia Democracy Forum before anniversary of Tiananmen Square Incident . {Link without Title} .

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.


Mail certification

In February 2006 , Yahoo! also announced their decision (along with AOL ) to give users the option to "certify" outgoing mail. That is, 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.

Yahoo! Mail user name bans

On , 2006 . Along with this action, Yahoo! also spoke up on this issue:
"We continuously evaluate abuse patterns in registration usernames to help prevent spam, fraud and other inappropriate behavior. A small number of people registered for IDs using specific terms with the sole purpose of promoting hate, and then used those IDs to post content that was harmful or threatening to others, thus violating Yahoo!'s Terms of Service.

'Allah' was one word being used for these purposes, with instances tied to defamatory language. We took steps to help protect our users by prohibiting use of the term in Yahoo! usernames. We recently re-evaluated the term 'Allah' and users can now register for IDs with this word because it is no longer a significant target for abuse. We regularly evaluate this type of activity and will continue to make adjustments to our registration process to help foster a positive customer experience."



Chatrooms and message boards

Due to fears of preying on underage children, the Yahoo! "user created" chatrooms were closed down in June 2005. However, Yahoo!'s messsage boards were not, as they are notorious for open trolling, flaming, racism, and general rudeness. The message boards are self-moderated; the only official channel for involving Yahoo! personnel is through a complaint form which seems to have limited utility.


IMPORTANT EVENTS

''Please note that this list is merely partial.''



Yahoo! Research Labs

Yahoo! has 3 research labs:


YAHOO! NEXT

See Also: 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.


SEE ALSO



EXTERNAL LINKS



Yahoo!-owned sites and services

This is a partial, alphabetized list. For a complete listing of the services see List of Yahoo! services .


Information about Yahoo!



Opposition to Yahoo!