It was founded by David Filo and Jerry Yang, Ph.D. candidates in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University in January 1994.
Initially the name was “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web” but was renamed as Yahoo in April 1994. Yahoo! is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle." In April 1995, Yahoo! Was funded with an initial investment of nearly $2 million USD by Sequoia Capital. Yahoo! launched a highly-successful IPO in April 1996 with a total of 49 employees. The company was valued at $850 million.
On 8 March 1997, Yahoo! acquired online communications company Four11. Four11's webmail service, Rocketmail, became Yahoo! Mail.
Today, Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet communications, commerce and media company that offers a comprehensive branded network of services to more than 345 million individuals each month worldwide.
Yahoo! Continues to maintain a strong brand and has evolved into a full-fledged search engine by acquiring existing search engine technology in mid 2003.
Brief history of Yahoo!
