Yahoo is the name by which a company is known that offers search, email and other Internet services.
Yahoo! Inc. , also known simply as Yahoo , is a North American company focused on providing Internet- related services. This company has a directory, a search engine, virtual stores and various applications, among which is an email system widely used worldwide.
The Yahoo giant was created during the early days of 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo , two students at Stanford University . Two years later the firm began trading on the New York Stock Exchange .
The name Yahoo
In relation to why it was named Yahoo , not much can be said because the information is not very precise. The strongest version maintains that Filo 's father used to comment that his son and Yang were two "yahoos" , a term used in literature to name a wild and atrocious creature.
Jonathan Swift (responsible for the work "Gulliver's Travels" ) and Jorge Luis Borges are some of the writers who used the concept. Another version maintains that Yahoo is an acronym for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle .
As Google grew, Yahoo's popularity began to decline.
The company's relationship with Microsoft
In February 2008 , Yahoo received a purchase offer from Microsoft valued at $44.6 billion . The proposal was rejected by the company, considering it too low.
A year and a half later, however, Yahoo and Microsoft reached an agreement regarding the use of the search engine.
Yahoo! Email
Yahoo! Email o Yahoo! Mail es uno de los servicios más populares de Yahoo.
It works in webmail mode (an email client that acts through a web interface and is accessible from a browser ) and has several million users. Yahoo! Messenger , an instant messaging application, is a companion application to mail.
In the shadow of Google
Yahoo certainly enjoyed a bright start; Anyone who has had the opportunity to surf the Internet back in the mid-90s will surely remember that their first email address was hosted on said company's servers. What no one knew is that in September 1998, a project that had also begun with the work of two university students would attract the attention of the cyber world: Google .
Despite the advantage that Yahoo had over its newborn competition, it did not take long for Google to acquire great popularity , which did not come from anything other than the user experience: more and better results, greater speed and a simple design. and direct.
Another company that fell into oblivion after its emergence was AltaVista, which until now had competed for first place with Yahoo; and perhaps there is something in the names that is partly responsible for the success or failure of such a company . In English, it is possible to convert any term into a verb, adjective or noun without much effort, given the flexibility of the language; phrases like "Do you Yahoo?" (Yahoo eas ?) or "Google it" (Google it ) are marketing tools that have given very good results for both companies, and that AltaVista clearly could not take advantage of, given the extent and shape of its brand.
As if the defeat in the field of search engines had not been enough, ten years after the launch of Yahoo, Google presented GMail, an email service that had the particularity of offering 1GB of initial space, which would grow constantly , between other characteristics that would make him immensely popular and, once again, overshadow his predecessors.
Yahoo over the years
Yahoo does not offer negligible services, and has the merit of having tried to adapt to always continue to claim its space in the market . Its biggest problem is that it relies on aesthetics instead of performance .
Of course, the average consumer, lacking interest in technology, values this aspect more than their own time and, given that these types of users number in the tens of thousands, it is understandable that Yahoo is still alive.