Twenty Years of Yahoo!

Twenty years ago, in February 1994, computer engineers Jerry Yang and Dave Filo built a website together called “Jerry and Dave’s Guide to the World Wide Web.” The Internet was still in its infancy, and Yang and Filo were attempting to make a kind of directory leading users to other websites. Their site was incredibly popular, and the following year they renamed their website “Yahoo!” (the exclamation mark is supposed to be there, and the name is meant to be read as a positive exclamation) and incorporated their business, officially forming Yahoo! Inc.

Rumor has it that Yang and Filo chose the name “Yahoo” because of the slang definition: “a rude, noisy, or violet person.” It’s believed that the word first came into common use as a result of 18th century novelist Jonathan Swift, who created the “Yahoos”—a fictional tribe of savages—in his landmark novel Gulliver’s Travels.

Another rumor claims that “yahoo” is an acronym wherein the letters spell out “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”. The “hierarchical” refers to how the Yahoo! databases are built and organized, and “officious” alludes to the many people who come to the site looking for help and direction. “Oracle” is inspired by the ancient Greek prophets who were touched by the gods and could see into the future; they were seen as a source of light and intelligence, and their advice was to be followed.

Yahoo! was initially intended to serve as a web portal. A web portal is a website designed specifically to bring information together in a particular way. Yahoo! was one of the first major search engines; people browsing the Internet looking for websites touching on a certain subject would often start their search on Yahoo! In fact, It’s still one of the most popular search engines in use today.

Yahoo! has always been at the forefront of popular Internet culture. As the company and the site continued to grow, Yahoo! became a destination site, providing breaking news stories, weather, and entertainment information. As we mentioned in a post earlier this week, their webmail service has remained steadily among the most popular for years.

Today Yahoo! is one of the most recognized sites—not to mention, companies and brands—on the Internet. Do you Yahoo!?