As someone who was a teenager when the internet really became mainstream, I can still remember the sound of the AIM door opening or closing, or the famous AOL ‘You’ve Got Mail!’. I also remember the first search engine I ever used. It was Yahoo! and homework research had become much easier than scrolling the rolodex at the school library. One of the amazing facts about Yahoo! is it was almost called “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web” after its creators. Luckily that name didn’t stick, and Yahoo! was born. Read on to see more Yahoo! facts and what the name actually stands for.
8 Yahoo! Facts
- Yahoo! was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994. (source) The website provided users a way to access a large number of services and answers to questions quickly and easily.
- Yahoo! is actually an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”. (source)
- In 1996, Yahoo!’s Initial Public Offering (IPO) was higher than any other tech startup at the time. (source) It had a 151% IPO spike taking the company worth to $848 million.
- Why does Yahoo! use the exclamation point? Unfortunately, the word “Yahoo” was already a trademark for a barbecue sauce company, so the punctuation was added and Yahoo! was born. (source)
- Yahoo! owners had a chance to buy Google, twice! (source) In 1998 Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin, who were unknown at the time in the tech world, offered to sell their new startup for $1 million so they could go back and resume classes at Stanford. Yahoo! didn’t buy and the offer came around again in 2002, this time at $5 billion. Yahoo! balked at the price. Today Google and its parent company Alphabet are worth over $500 billion.
- Yahoo! is still the most searched news site in the U.S. (source) Yahoo! News was found to be the most popular news website across the country, in terms of unique monthly visitors.
- Yahoo! once rejected a $45 billion acquisition offer from Microsoft. (source) In 2008, Microsoft offered almost $45 billion to buy Yahoo! and the generous offer was turned down. Later Verizon would purchase the majority of Yahoo! for just $4.8 billion in 2017.
- Yahoo! Inc headquarters is located in Sunnyvale, Calif. (source) Its campus offers many different cafés, a large cafeteria, a complete fitness center and a variety of game rooms. Outside the campus also has volleyball, bocce ball, and basketball courts.
