Yahoo!, the success of the collaborative way
The term Yahoo! comes from the name of creatures in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swith. It was originally a directory of websites.
In 2008 the site had 1.5 billion visits. In early 2009 was still the most visited site, but according to Alexa, it is now overtaken by Google, Facebook and Youtube.
History
The company was founded in 1994 and Jerry Yang and David Filo. The domain yahoo.com was created January 18, 1995. The directory was previously a sub-directory at standford.edu.
The search tool was turned into a search engine gradually. In the late 90s, the site became a portal.
The acquisition of RocketMail in March 97 allowed the firmr to create Yahoo! Mail.
In January 99 she acquires Geocities that was the third most visited site in the world, and so became a hosting company.
It changed the mode of operation of Geocities that was close to a social network and causes a mass exodus of users. Geocities (founded in 1994) was closed in 2009.
A takeover attempt by Microsoft in 2009 was aborted due to opposition from Jerry Yang. His replacement as CEO by Carol Bartz has facilitated an alliance between the two companies.
Major acquisitions
The company has been developed through further acquisitions and alliances. She has teamed up with eBay and recently with Microsoft, the search engine Bing replacing that of Yahoo!
- RocketMail in 1997. A free email service.
- Geocities in 1999. Free hosting sites and social site.
- Inktomi in 2002. A search engine.
- Konfabulator in 2005. A software application that puts widget on the desktop, became obsolete when a similar tool was built into Microsoft Vista.
- Flickr, a site for sharing photos in 2005.
- Del.icio.us in 2005, a site of bookmarks.
- Associated Content in May 2010. A website that pays authors if they are US citizens and mostly intended to generate advertising revenue with content produced in quantity but poor.
Yahoo! sites
Yahoo! has three social sites with a very wide audience.
On answers.com, users ask questions to be answered by other surfers. Then the first choose among the responses that they deem the best answer, which is actually the only difference with a forum. The site also offers a dictionary.
It has a issue search engine that can find a question already asked and redirects directly to the best answer.
The site was launched July 5, 2005 and has become very popular even if the quality of answers is far to the best. Google has tried to emulate the service without success and then imagined different services: Moderator and Tipjar. (See Google Sites).
The site for sharing pictures is cited in the famous document: Ajax, a new Approach to Web Applications for its ease of use.
It was created by a Canadian company, Ludicorp, in 2004 so that user can exchange messages about a online game from the company, with the ability to upload photos . It was bought in March 2005 by Yahoo!
In 2008, videos have been added.
The first site for sharing bookmarks became popular under the name of del.icio.us. After having bought it, Yahoo! changed the domain name.
Users store favorites as on their browser pages to retain the URL and make the list public.
We can see the accounts and other users and so find interesting sites. The number of Internet users that have marked a page is displayed and is an indicator of popularity. In addition, pages that become quickly popular will go the home, which gives them a wide audience. It can happen even to old pages.
Delicious is rivaled by Stumbleupon.
Alliance with Microsoft
The alliance has been approved by US and EU regulators in February 2010. Now search results come from Bing and no longer from the Yahoo! search engine.
Missed opportunities for Yahoo
The company had in its portfolio sites now abandoned that already were built from concepts that others took advantage.
- Geocities
This site was combining social networking and hosting. He could have become something similar to Facebook. Instead the social aspect was removed and the site limited to hostings only will be closed in 2009. - Overture
That is the site which invented the principle of paid per click ads that have made the fortune of Google. It was bought by Yahoo in 2003. - Instant.
The technology that Google has implemented in its search engine in 2010, Yahoo already possessed it in 2005 and has never used it. - Delicious
Bookmark site bought by Yahoo could have had the trafic Twitter and Digg. It never evoluted and in 2010, judging it not profitable, Yahoo announced its intention to resell.
Some companies have no vision for the future.
More
- What happened to Yahoo?
- Yahoo! could have launched Instant in 2005!
- What happens after Yahoo! acquires you. With a list of acquisitions.
| Tweet |
|