by Cécile Décourtieux
CREATED BY MMr. FILO AND YANG, YAHOO REMAINS AN ICON FOR SILICON VALLEY
With its Internet browser Netscape and the commerce site Amazon, Yahoo! was during the Internet boom one of the most brilliant stars of Nasdaq, the American exchange for new technologies.
Its beginnings were a classic. In 1994, like many others at Stanford, the Silicon Valley university, students Jerry Yang and David Filo, top computer students, became interested in the Internet and the possibilities offered by this new medium. They had the idea to create online an inventory of the sites they found most interesting. Their directory, which quickly became immensely popular, was named Yahoo!, acronym for "yet another hierarchical officious oracle".
Marc Andreessen, one of the founders of Netscape, gave the two a decisive help by lending them computers. Michael Moritz, another Silicon Valley figure and representative for the investment firm Sequoia became interested as well. He invested 2 million dollars in the duo (Yahoo! going to the Stock Market will bring in to his firm 32 billion dollars in 1996...). Management help comes from Tim Koogle, known as the Net "papy", an ex from telecommunications equipment provider Motorola, since our two students don't add up to age 50 between them.
Thus the incredible developement of this modest start-up can begin. Yahoo! literally invents the notion of a "portal": the site works to attract the maximum numbers of Internet users by offering them just about everything they might be looking for on the Web. Information(Yahoo! Yahoo! Finance, Sport, etc)...In order to finances its services, Yahoo! bets on the notion of using publicity. Sponsors will pay for these services indirectly, by buying on-line publicity space.
ONE OF THE MOST VISITED SITES
Visitors and sponsors materialize as planned: at the end of the 1990s, Yahoo! is one of the most visited sites in the world and one of the rare money-making "dotcoms", along with Ebay, the on-line auctioneer. Investors are also confident: in 1998, the firm has a 203 million dollar income, but its market capitalization reaches to 38 billion dollars...As is the case with Google, a neighbor a few kilometers away, the home office of Yahoo! in Sunnyvale California is known for a relaxed work atmosphere and numerous social advantages for its employees.
The Internet bubble bursts, in march 2000. Publicity is not so forthcoming. Analysts have second thoughts about the "100% publicity" strategy of the portal. Yahoo! profits disappear, share price drops to 4 dollars, Mr Koogle is forced to leave, early 2001. Yahoo! has never recovered its growth rates of the 1990s. Yet the firm remains a veritable icone, very respected in Silicon Valley for the innovations it has introduced.
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CHRONOLOGY
2000: Web portal AmericaOnline makes an ofer to buy out Time Warner, for an initial 150 billion dollars. The two groups will eventually merge by an exchange of shares.
2005 Media group News Corp., owned by Robert Murdoch, buys the on-line social network MySpace, for 580 million dollars. EBay buys out the internet telephone group Skype, for 2,5 billion dollars.
2006: Google acquires YouTube, a site for sharing amateur video for 1,65 billion dollars, in shares.
2007: Microsoft gifts itself with on-line publicity player aQuantive for 6 billion dollars.
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