What is Yahoo!?
Yahoo! is the second most used search engine on the web. Yahoo! provide many services apart from searching; they provide web-hosting, email accounts and shopping. This enables a user to do everything they could possibly want to do from one website.
Brief History
Yahoo! started out in 1994, and was created by Jerry Yang and David Filo. Their idea was to categorize all of their favourite websites onto one website. At the end of 1994 they had received 1 million hits, then in 1995 Sequoia Capital invested in the company. 1996 saw Yahoo! sell 2.6 million shares publicly at a cost of $13 each, in turn making $33.8 billion. 2004 saw Yahoo! launch their own search engine that used a web crawler, Yahoo! Search was born.
After years of success, Microsoft made an offer to buy out Yahoo!. Their offer was $44.6 billion in cash/stock. This bid was rejected and with Microsoft’s share prices falling this offer was only ever going to decrease. Talks between the two companies have now ceased - but who knows what the future holds?
What is Yahoo!?
Originally Yahoo! started out as a large, categorized web directory. Users would search the Yahoo! directory in the hope they would find a particular website that relates to what they had searched for. This directory is edited by humans, and there are no guarantees that you will be accepted once you have paid for the application.
Yahoo! Search is now the main competitor to Google’s search engine. Yahoo! provides its own web crawler gathering its own unique search results, where previously they had relied on other companies to do it for them i.e. Google.
Branching Out
Yahoo! provides the directory and search engine service; but also provides many more services to keep customers happy. Yahoo! mail is one of the main email providers on the net, there are also shopping channels and Yahoo! Messenger. This enables Yahoo! to capture and cater for more users.
Summary
Yahoo! is the second largest search engine on the web; and it is the most visited website on the internet according to recent surveys. Yahoo! not only provides search engine function, but a whole array of other services.
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