Yahoo!





Yahoo! (spelled with the exclamation point) is a popular Internet portal and
Web directory. It was founded by David Filo and Jerry Yang in April 1995.

The Web site started out as "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" but
eventually received a new moniker with the help of a dictionary. The name
Yahoo! is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," but
Filo and Yang insist they selected the name because they liked the general
definition of a yahoo: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." Yahoo! itself first
resided on Yang's student workstation, "Akebono," while the software was
lodged on Filo's computer, "Konishiki" - both named after legendary sumo wrestlers.

The "yet another" phrasing goes back at least to the Unix utility yacc,
whose name is an acronym for "yet another compiler compiler".

As Yahoo!'s popularity has increased, so has the range of features it
offers, making it a kind of one-stop shop for all the popular activities of
the Internet. These included a web-based e-mail service, an instant
messaging client, various news and information portals, and even online
shopping and auction facilities. Yahoo! also acquired the popular Geocities
free web-hosting service, and various competing mailing list providers which
were merged under the name Yahoo! Groups.