On March 1 2011, Yahoo! turned 16 years old. A recent Yahoo! blog post took a look back at the last 16 years and it’s fair to say, it’s come a long way.
It all started in February 1994 in when two students – David Filo and Jerry Yang, decided to build a guide to the web as a way of keeping track of their personal interests.
These lists grew and grew before soon they became too unwieldy, so they broke them down in to categories. When those categories became too full, subcategories were created, and Yahoo! was born.
To give some indication of the rate of growth, later the same year, Yahoo! celebrated its first million-hit day.
Fast-forward 16 years. Yahoo!’s global network includes 25 properties and is available in 13 languages.
From humble beginnings, Yahoo! has grown to become one of the premier digital media companies in the world.
The company commented;
“Yahoo! was created to make sense of this big, messy place we call the Web. And we’ve never strayed from that mission: to filter through the clutter and help people connect with what’s most important to them. By connecting each person with what is relevant, meaningful and inspiring to them, we create deeply personal digital experiences.
Congrats to all the loyal Yahoos, Yahoo! users and Yahoo! advertisers who have contributed to our success over these sweet 16 years.”
Birthday giddiness aside, there’s no ignoring the fact it’s been a tough ride for Yahoo! – it’s been constantly over-shadowed by Google and a recent string of poor quarterly results have caused a lot of unwanted attention. You can read more about Yahoo!’s ‘issues’ over at Search Engine Land.
Happy birthday, Yahoo!
