Ryan
Today, Yahoo! is one of the world’s top search engines, with $7 billion in 2007 revenue and operating income of $730 million. But it wasn’t long ago that the ultra-popular web portal was nothing more than side project between a couple of college students. According to Jessica Livingston’s book “Founders at Work”, tamford University’s Jerry Yang and David Filo originally created their search technology for their own personal use. There was no easy way to find information on their school’s network, so the pair created a crawler that would track down what they needed and make it easily searchable. It all snowballed from there, as Yahoo! traded a mind-blowing $118 per share just prior to the 2000’s tech stock crash.
Today, Yahoo! is being fought over by Google and Microsoft, each of whom is eager to lavish $40 billion+ in a quest to buy or partner with them.
