Yahoo! was founded in January 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo, with the website originally named Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web before being renamed Yahoo! just three months later
Before Google, Yahoo! was the go-to search engine. Some might even say Yahoo! was the model that made Google so successful today.
The site has been an integral navigational tool for internet users for more than three decades. However, many are only now discovering what the name actually means.
Yahoo! was created by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994. Initially named Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web, it was swiftly renamed Yahoo! just three months later. Fast forward three decades and internet buffs are taken aback upon learning the name actually stands for something
Several were blissfully unaware that it is a backronym, which means “an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. It led to amusing guesses like one Reddit user’s jestful: “I thought it was You Always Have Other Options.” Another chimed in with: “It’s a backronym and I don’t care how many Yahoo flacks say otherwise.”
Yahoo!’s founders, both electrical engineering postgrads, decided on yahoo.com for their domain in January 1995, primarily drawn to the term’s definition in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels – “rude, unsophisticated, uncouth.”
In fact, Yahoo! is a backronym for Yet Another Hierarchically Organised Oracle. Yahoo! experienced a surge of popularity in the late 1990s, paralleling other search giants such as MSN, Lycos and Excite, which led to its share price doubling in December 1999.
Just six months on, Yahoo and Google struck a deal allowing Google to power searches on yahoo.com. Yet, many point fingers at Yahoo’s recent decline due to dodgy acquisitions, snubbing an offer from Microsoft and missing out on Facebook.
Reflecting on the tech giant’s missteps, one user remarked: “Keep in mind, Google, Facebook, et al, may not have become what they are today if Yahoo had bought them. They’ve made such poor decisions it’s likely they’d have run them into the ground still.”
Another chimed in: “I am old and remember the days when Yahoo was booming. Where it all changed was when Google became their search and they allowed it to be branded Google. It did not take long before basically Google had ‘stole’ all of Yahoo’s customers. I was thinking at the time how crazy it was for Yahoo to allow Google to be branded instead of using in the background without any Google branding.”
A third reminisced: “I remember in early 2000s everyone’s browser homepage was Yahoo (at least in Hong Kong, yahoo.com.hk to be exact). It had got everything, daily news highlights, email, dictionary, search engine. It still feels incredible that we’ve got rid of Yahoo in favour of a blank search engine page nowadays.”
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