Yahoo Timeline
By David F. Carr | Posted 2007-10-26
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Losing its lead in Internet traffic and ad revenue along with its chance to win the search market, Yahoo aims to reinvent itself. But with a slowing economy and downward forecasts for earnings, how bad are things for Yahoo? That could depend on Microsoft’s plans to buy the struggling Web portal.
Yahoo Timeline
1994
Yahoo Web directory created by Jerry Yang and David Filo, two Stanford University PhD candidates, working on it in their spare time.
1995
Yahoo Inc. formed with Tim Koogle as CEO and the cofounders in more informal leadership roles—Yang the company evangelist and Filo the hardcore techie.
1996
Yahoo initial public offering. Stock rises 270 percent to $33 on first day of trading. Yahoo outsources keyword search to AltaVista.
1998
Yahoo acquires Internet direct marketer Yoyodyne Entertainment.
1999
Yahoo acquires GeoCities and Broadcast.com.
2000
Yahoo shares hit an all-time high of $475 (adjusting for stock splits, about four times the stock's current level). Yahoo outsources keyword search to Google.
2001
The dot-com bubble bursts, sending Yahoo shares to an all-time low of $8.11. Terry Semel takes over as Yahoo CEO and begins the process of rebuilding the company and forging new relationships with 2002 advertisers. At year-end, Yahoo announces acquisition of Inktomi search engine.
2003
Yahoo acquires Overture, which pioneered the paid search marketing model from which Google now profits.
2004
Google goes public, revealing just how lucrative search advertising can be. Yahoo replaces Google search with its own search engine, forms Yahoo Research arm to develop new technologies.
2005
Yahoo celebrates 10- year anniversary. Acquires Flickr (photo sharing), Upcoming (social event calendar), Del.icio.us (bookmark sharing) and MusicMatch (music sharing).
2006
Yahoo says Project Panama, a new search advertising platform, will be delivered in Q3—and incurs Wall Street's wrath when it delays launch until Q4. Yahoo reorganizes into three major operating groups: Advertiser & Publisher, Audience and Technology.
2007
Terry Semel resigns as CEO and is replaced by cofounder Jerry Yang. Former CFO Sue Decker, who had been running the Advertiser & Publisher group, is named president.
David F. Carr is the Technology Editor for Baseline Magazine, a Ziff Davis publication focused on information technology and its management, with an emphasis on measurable, bottom-line results. He wrote two of Baseline's cover stories focused on the role of technology in disaster recovery, one focused on the response to the tsunami in Indonesia and another on the City of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.David has been the author or co-author of many Baseline Case Dissections on corporate technology successes and failures (such as the role of Kmart's inept supply chain implementation in its decline versus Wal-Mart or the successful use of technology to create new market opportunities for office furniture maker Herman Miller). He has also written about the FAA's halting attempts to modernize air traffic control, and in 2003 he traveled to Sierra Leone and Liberia to report on the role of technology in United Nations peacekeeping.David joined Baseline prior to the launch of the magazine in 2001 and helped define popular elements of the magazine such as Gotcha!, which offers cautionary tales about technology pitfalls and how to avoid them.
