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Yahoo Turns 10; Free Ice Cream for America
indiejade writes "It was 10 years ago today that Yahoo was born in a trailer outside Stanford University. Joining the celebration is Baskin Robbins, which is serving up a free scoop of ice cream in honor of the day Yahoo began climbing the ranks from its humble beginning. Founders Jerry Yang and David Filo joined CEO Terry Semel to kick off the stock market opening bell this morning. The Birthday Boys claim that they are happy with the steady growth of their company, and expressed no regrets for their "once upon a time" decision to fund Google. "Competition is good," they said prior to the opening bell this morning."
I don't like your outlook on life.
Carl
Vote Libertarian
Man, 1995... I still remember being awed by the way that places like yahoo.com and hotwired.com looked in Netscape (was 2.0 even out yet? I forget, heh), compared to what I was used to before that (stuff like pine or gopher running on green-screen terms). I was 16 at the time, in college a couple of years early, and looking back (20/20 hindsight and all that), I wish I'd taken the hint on my early fascination and gone into programming/web-related studies and jobs then instead of chemistry... I guess I felt obligated to pursue a "real job" like chemistry. Here, ten years later, I'm a programmer and chemistry is just sort of my side hobby. I wonder sometimes what my life would have been like had I gotten into CS and gone into the IT workforce by '97-'98 instead of picking it up as hobby later and entering the IT workforce right before the bust.
Anyway, for some good nostalgia, here you go:
Archive of old versions of Netscape back to 1.1 days on multiple platforms
Wayback machine link for Yahoo! front page, late 1996 (hotwired.com excludes wayback, darn it... i recall it being visually louder than a hawaiian shirt on fire. the current wired.com is actually subdued compared to what I recall it being)
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
What's "dl"?
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
I'm not sure why anyone would question this. It's common practice for companies to invest in competitors to ensure their future existance. The logic being that the dominate company knows the sector will succeed and so it invests in up and coming companies in the sector knowing that if the newcomer takes the sector as google has they will still have a (usually sizable) intrest in the sector. Think of it as insurance or hedging. It's a good idea.
-3cents
I remember sitting in the Comp lab thinking, "wow" the Yahoo thing is kinda cool, alot like Gopher.
Good times...
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
45 degrees?? That's really hot! Why wouldn't you want ice cream a day like that?
Boy, I loved Yahoo back then. I suppose I stopped using Yahoo as my search engine when that message went away. If Yahoo had used its internet portal identity with Google's search capabilities, they would've been an unstoppable Juggernaut.
While almost all the other .com's were .bombing, Yahoo very quietly amassed an enormous portfolio of once high-flying search engines [on pennies to the dollar, compared to their pre-crash values]:
So I wouldn't count them out just yet.Almost happened. A couple of years ago, Yahoo! tried to buy Google (made sense, as Yahoo! owned a small stake in Google from when they initially funded them when they first started). They couldn't agree on the price though. Yahoo! didn't want to pay more than $500 million and Google wanted $2 billion.
(Today, Yahoo! is worth $44.68 billion. Google is worth $50.98 billion.)
Actually when I worked at a grocery store we were told that ice creams sells best during the winter months.
Well, it's different for a store and an ice cream shop. I go to an ice cream shop during the summer, but wouldn't think of walking into one in the winter. On the other hand, since I'm home more often in the winter, I'll pick up a quart of ice cream to eat while watching a movie, something I don't do too much of during the summer.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.