Ask.com

Ask.com, is an Internet search engine. It is also the company name of the division of IAC Search & Media, founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California. The original software was implemented by Gary Chevsky from his own design. Three venture capital firms, Highland Capital, Institutional Venture Partners, and The RODA Group were early investors.

History

Ask.com was originally known as Ask Jeeves, where "Jeeves" is the name of the "gentleman's personal gentleman", or valet (illustrated by Marcos Sorenson), fetching answers to any question asked. The character was based on Jeeves, Bertie Wooster's fictional valet from the works of P. G. Wodehouse.

The original idea behind Ask Jeeves was to allow users to get answers to questions posed in everyday, natural language. Ask.com was the first commercial question-answering search engine for the World Wide Web. It supports a variety of user queries in plain English (natural language), as well as traditional keyword searching and strives to be more intuitive and user-friendly than other search engines. In other words, when you ask a question, it searches for the answer. Ask Jeeves sold the same technology used on the ask.com site to corporations including Dell, Toshiba, and E*Trade. That part of the business was sold to Kanisa in 2002.

As time passed and keyword search engines such as Google rose to prominence by indexing more webpages, Ask Jeeves suffered a loss of many of its users. The technology was reworked to allow keyword searches as well, but by this time Ask Jeeves had dropped below Google, MSN, and Yahoo! in the size of their userbase. However, because Ask.com was slow to index some new webpages, Ask.com did not suffer the onslaught of computer-generated linkspam results that initially flooded Google Search, MSN Search, and Yahoo! Search and buried significant webpages that Ask Jeeves (or Ask.com) could still find.

New features are first tested out on http://www.askx.com page before being released to the main search page.

On September 23, 2005 the company announced plans to phase out Jeeves and on February 27, 2006 the character was disassociated with Ask.com.

Ask.com owns a variety of sites including country-specific sites for UK, Germany, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, and Spain along with Ask For Kids, Teoma (now defunct), Excite, MyWay.com, iWon.com, Bloglines and several others. The combined traffic to these web sites places Ask.com in the top ten parent web companies in the US, as rated by both comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings in September 2004. As of June 5, 2007 the site relaunched with a new, more simplistic look.

Corporate details

Ask Jeeves, Inc. stock traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange from July 1999 to July 2005, under the ticker symbol ASKJ. At the time of the IPO in 1999, ASKJ had the 3rd best first-day performance in history. In 2003, it was the 51st best performing stock out of 3229 companies on the NASDAQ. The price of Ask Jeeves stock soared more than 500% throughout the course of the year. In July 2005, the ASKJ ticker was retired upon the closing of the acquisition by IAC/InterActiveCorp. IAC/InterActiveCorp trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol IACI. The IAC/InterActiveCorp deal was announced in March 2005 valuing ASKJ at $1.85 billion. IAC/InterActiveCorp is a media holding company founded and run by Barry Diller.

Google

Overview

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

As a first step to fulfilling that mission, Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed a new approach to online search that took root in a Stanford University dorm room and quickly spread to information seekers around the globe. Google is now widely recognized as the world's largest search engine -- an easy-to-use free service that usually returns relevant results in a fraction of a second.

When you visit www.google.com or one of the dozens of other Google domains, you'll be able to find information in many different languages; check stock quotes, maps, and news headlines; lookup phonebook listings for every city in the United States; search billions of images and peruse the world's largest archive of Usenet messages -- more than 1 billion posts dating back to 1981.

We also provide ways to access all this information without making a special trip to the Google homepage. The Google Toolbar enables you to conduct a Google search from anywhere on the web. And for those times when you're away from your PC altogether, Google can be used from a number of wireless platforms including WAP and i-mode phones.

Google's utility and ease of use have made it one of the world's best known brands almost entirely through word of mouth from satisfied users. As a business, Google generates revenue by providing advertisers with the opportunity to deliver measurable, cost-effective online advertising that is relevant to the information displayed on any given page. This makes the advertising useful to you as well as to the advertiser placing it. We believe you should know when someone has paid to put a message in front of you, so we always distinguish ads from the search results or other content on a page. We don't sell placement in the search results themselves, or allow people to pay for a higher ranking there.

Thousands of advertisers use our Google AdWords program to promote their products and services on the web with targeted advertising, and we believe AdWords is the largest program of its kind. In addition, thousands of web site managers take advantage of our Google AdSense program to deliver ads relevant to the content on their sites, improving their ability to generate revenue and enhancing the experience for their users.

To learn more about Google, click on the link at the left for the area that most interests you. Or type what you want to find into our search box and hit enter. Once you do, you'll be on your way to understanding why others say, "Google is the closest thing the Web has to an ultimate answer machine."

What's a Google?

"Googol" is the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, "Mathematics and the Imagination" by Kasner and James Newman. Google's play on the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the web.

History

Google began as a research project in January 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Ph.D. students at Stanford University, California. They hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better results than existing techniques, which ranked results according to the number of times the search term appeared on a page. Their search engine was originally nicknamed, "BackRub" because the system checked backlinks to estimate a site's importance. A small search engine called Rankdex was already exploring a similar strategy. Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant web pages must be the most relevant pages associated with the search, Page and Brin tested their thesis as part of their studies, and laid the foundation for their search engine. Originally the search engine used the Stanford University website with the domain google.stanford.edu. The domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997, and the company was incorporated as Google Inc. on September 7, 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California. The total initial investment raised for the new company eventually amounted to almost $1.1 million, including a $100,000 check by Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems.

In March 1998, the company moved into offices in Palo Alto, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups. After quickly outgrowing two other sites, the company leased a complex of buildings in Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway from Silicon Graphics (SGI) in 2003. The company has remained at this location ever since, and the complex has since become known as the Googleplex (a play on the word googolplex, a 1 followed by a googol zeros). In 2006, Google bought the property from SGI for $319 million.

The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design and usability. In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords. The ads were text-based to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed. Keywords were sold based on a combination of price bid and clickthroughs, with bidding starting at $.05 per click. This model of selling keyword advertising was pioneered by Goto.com (later renamed Overture Services, before being acquired by Yahoo! and rebranded as Yahoo! Search Marketing). While many of its dot-com rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose in stature while generating revenue.

The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol," which refers to 10100 (the number represented by a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros). Having found its way increasingly into everyday language, the verb, "google", was added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006, meaning, "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet."

A patent describing part of Google's ranking mechanism (PageRank) was granted on September 4, 2001. The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor.

Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is an American public corporation, currently one of the world's largest corporations (by revenues) according to the 2007 Fortune 500. It was founded by Sam Walton in 1962, incorporated on October 31, 1969, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972. It is the largest private employer in the world and world's fourth largest utility or commercial employer, only trailing the People's Liberation Army of China, the National Health Service of the United Kingdom and the Indian Railways. Wal-Mart is the largest grocery retailer in the United States, with an estimated 20% of the retail grocery and consumables business, and the largest toy seller in the U.S., with an estimated 45% of the retail toy business, having surpassed Toys "R" Us in the late 1990s.

Wal-Mart operates in Mexico as Walmex, in the United Kingdom as ASDA, and in Japan as The Seiyu Co., Ltd. Wholly owned operations are located in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Puerto Rico, and the UK. Wal-Mart's investments outside North America have produced mixed results. In 2006, Wal-Mart sold its retail operations in South Korea and Germany due to sustained losses and a highly competitive market.

Wal-Mart has been the target of criticism from some community groups, women's rights groups, grassroots organizations, and labor unions. Specific criticisms include the company's extensive foreign product sourcing, low rates of employee health insurance, resistance to union representation, and alleged sexism, among other things.

History

Sam Walton's retailing career began when he accepted a job offer at a JCPenney store in Des Moines, Iowa on June 3, 1940 where he remained for 18 months. In 1945, he met with Butler Brothers, a regional retailer that owned a chain of variety stores called Ben Franklin. Butler Brothers offered him a Ben Franklin store in Newport, Arkansas.

Walton could not come to agreement on his lease renewal and could not find a new location in Newport; so he located a new variety store in Bentonville, Arkansas which he would open as another Ben Franklin franchise, but called "Walton's Five and Dime." Walton achieved higher sales volume by selling products with slightly smaller markups than most competitors.

On July 2, 1962, Walton opened the first Wal-Mart store, Wal-Mart Discount City and within five years the company expanded to 24 stores across the state of Arkansas and reached $12.6 million in sales. In 1968, it opened its first stores outside Arkansas, in Sikeston, Missouri and Claremore, Oklahoma.

The company was incorporated as Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. on October 31, 1969, and in 1970 opened its home office in Bentonville, Arkansas, and its first distribution center. There were now 38 stores operating with 1,500 employees and sales of $44.2 million. The company began trading stock at this time as a publicly held company on October 1, 1972, and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange shortly thereafter. The first stock split occurred in May 1971 at a market price of $47. By this time, Wal-Mart was operating in five states: Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri and Oklahoma, and entered Tennessee in 1973, and Kentucky and Mississippi in 1974. As it moved into Texas in 1975, there were 125 stores with 7,500 employees, and total sales of $340.3 million.

Wal-Mart continued to grow rapidly during the 1980s, and by its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1987, there were 1,198 stores with sales of $15.9 billion and 200,000 associates. This year also marked the completion of the company's satellite network, a $24 million investment, linking all operating units of the company with their Bentonville Office via two-way voice, data, and one-way video communication. At the time, this was the largest private satellite network, and allowed the corporate office to track inventory, sales, and send instant communication to their stores. Company founder Sam Walton stepped down as CEO the following year, and was replaced by David Glass. Walton remained on as Chairman of the Corporate Board of Directors, and the company also restructured their senior management positions, elevating a cadre of executives to positions of greater responsibility.

Also in 1988, the first Wal-Mart Supercenter opened in Washington, Missouri. Wal-Mart expanded their superstore concept during the 1990s, and shortly thereafter surpassed Toys "R" Us in toy sales. The company also opened overseas stores during this period, entering the South American market in 1995 with stores in Argentina and Brazil, and purchasing ASDA in the United Kingdom for $10 billion in 1999. In 1998, Wal-Mart entered the grocery business, introducing their Neighborhood Market concept with three stores in Arkansas. By 2005, estimates indicate that the company controlled approximately 20% of the retail grocery and consumables business.

By 2000, as H. Lee Scott was named President and CEO of the company, Wal-Mart's sales increased to $165 billion. In 2002, Wal-Mart was listed for the first time on the Fortune 500 list of the world's largest corporations, with revenues of $219.8 billion and profits of $6.7 billion. The company was subsequently listed at #1 for every year after 2002 except for 2006.

In 2005, Wal-Mart had $312.4 billion in sales, more than 6,200 facilities around the world, including 3,800 stores in the United States and 2,800 international units, and employing more than 1.6 million associates worldwide. In fact, their U.S. presence had grown so rapidly that there were only small pockets of the country that remained further than 60 miles away from the nearest Wal-Mart. Also in 2005, focusing on becoming more ecologically-friendly, the company designed two new experimental stores, one in McKinney, Texas and the other in Aurora, Colorado, featuring wind turbines, photovoltaic solar panels, biofuel-capable boilers, water-cooled refrigerators, and xeriscape gardens.

In March 2006, Wal-Mart sought to attempt to appeal to a more affluent demographic, with the opening of a new supercenter in Plano, Texas, and is intended to compete against stores that some view as more upscale and appealing, such as Target. The new store features wooden floors, wider aisles, a sushi bar, a coffee/sandwich shop (with free Wi-Fi Internet access), and higher-end items such as microbrew beer, expensive wines, and high-end electronics. The exterior sports the less-common hunter green background behind the Wal-Mart letters instead of the trademark blue.

On September 12, 2007, after 19 years, Wal-Mart introduced new advertising with the slogan, "Save Money Live Better," instead of "Always Low Prices, Always". It commissioned Global Insight for the ads and the report stated that as of 2006, the retailer saves American families $2,500 yearly (up 7.3% from $2,329 , 2004). The new research found that the reduction in price levels due to Wal-Mart resulted to savings for consumers of $287 billion in 2006, which is $957 / person or $2,500 / household.

YouTube

YouTube

YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips on www.YouTube.com and across the Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email.

Everyone can watch videos on YouTube. People can see first-hand accounts of current events, find videos about their hobbies and interests, and discover the quirky and unusual. As more people capture special moments on video, YouTube is empowering them to become the broadcasters of tomorrow.

YouTube received funding from Sequoia Capital in November 2005 and was officially launched one month later in December. Chad Hurley and Steve Chen proceeded to become the first members of the YouTube management team and currently serve as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer respectively.

In November 2006, within a year of its launch, YouTube was purchased by Google Inc. in one of the most talked-about acquisitions to date.

YouTube has struck numerous partnership deals with content providers such as CBS, BBC, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group, Warner Music Group, NBA, The Sundance Channel and many more.

History

YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal. Prior to PayPal, Hurley studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The domain name "YouTube.com" was activated on February 15, 2005, and the website was developed over the subsequent months. The creators offered the public a preview of the site in May 2005, six months before YouTube made its official debut.
YouTube's current headquarters in San Bruno
YouTube's current headquarters in San Bruno

Like many technology startups, YouTube was started as an angel-funded enterprise from a makeshift office in a garage. In November 2005, venture firm Sequoia Capital invested an initial $3.5 million; additionally, Roelof Botha, partner of the firm and former CFO of PayPal, joined the YouTube board of directors. In April 2006, Sequoia put an additional $8 million into the company, which had experienced huge popular growth within its first few months.

During the summer of 2006, YouTube was one of the fastest growing websites on the Web, and was ranked the 5th most popular website on Alexa, far outpacing even MySpace's rate of growth. According to a July 16, 2006 survey, 100 million video clips are viewed daily on YouTube, with an additional 65,000 new videos uploaded every 24 hours. The website averages nearly 20 million visitors per month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, where around 44% are female, 56% male, and the 12- to 17-year-old age group is dominant. YouTube's pre-eminence in the online video market is substantial. According to the website Hitwise.com, YouTube commands up to 64% of the UK online video market.
Wikinews has related news:
Google purchases YouTube for $1.65 billion

On October 9, 2006, it was announced that the company would be purchased by Google for US$1.65 billion in stock. The purchase agreement between Google and YouTube came after YouTube presented three agreements with media companies in an attempt to escape the threat of copyright-infringement lawsuits. YouTube will continue operating independently, with its co-founders and 67 employees working within the company. The deal to acquire YouTube closed on November 13, and was, at the time, Google's second largest acquisition.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world. With rare exceptions, its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet, simply by clicking the edit this page link. The name Wikipedia is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a type of collaborative website) and encyclopedia. Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference Web sites.

In every article, links will guide the user to associated articles, often with additional information. Anyone is welcome to add information, cross-references or citations, as long as they do so within Wikipedia's editing policies and to an appropriate standard. There is no need to worry about accidentally damaging Wikipedia when adding or improving information, as other editors are always around to advise or correct obvious errors, and Wikipedia's software, known as MediaWiki, is carefully designed to allow easy reversal of editorial mistakes.

Because Wikipedia is an ongoing work to which, in principle, anybody can contribute, it differs from a paper-based reference source in important ways. In particular, older articles tend to be more comprehensive and balanced, while newer articles more frequently contain significant misinformation, unencyclopedic content, or vandalism. Users need to be aware of this to obtain valid information and avoid misinformation that has been recently added and not yet removed (see Researching with Wikipedia for more details). However, unlike a paper reference source, Wikipedia is continually updated, with the creation or updating of articles on topical events within seconds, minutes or hours, rather than months or years for printed encyclopedias.

Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, which has created an entire family of free-content projects. On all of these projects, you are welcome to be bold and edit articles yourself, contributing knowledge as you see fit in a collaborative way.

If you have not done so, we invite you to take a few moments to read What Wikipedia is (and is not), so that you have an understanding of how to consult or contribute to Wikipedia. Further information on key topics appears below. If you cannot find what you are looking for, try the Frequently Asked Questions or see Where to ask questions. For help with editing and other issues, see Help:Contents.

Wikipedia history

Wikipedia was founded as an offshoot of Nupedia, a now-abandoned project to produce a free encyclopedia. Nupedia had an elaborate system of peer review and required highly qualified contributors, but the writing of articles was slow. During 2000, Jimmy Wales, founder of Nupedia, and Larry Sanger, whom Wales had employed to work on the project, discussed ways of supplementing Nupedia with a more open, complementary project.

On the evening of January 2, 2001, Sanger had a conversation over dinner with Ben Kovitz, a computer programmer, in San Diego, California. Kovitz, who was a regular on "Ward's Wiki" (the WikiWikiWeb), explained the wiki concept to Sanger. Sanger saw that a wiki would be an excellent format whereby a more open, less formal encyclopedia project could be pursued. Sanger easily persuaded Wales, who had already been introduced to the wiki concept, to set up a wiki for Nupedia, and Nupedia's first wiki went online on January 10.

There was considerable resistance on the part of Nupedia's editors and reviewers to the idea of associating Nupedia with a website in the wiki format, so the new project was given the name "Wikipedia" and launched on its own domain, wikipedia.com, on January 15 (now called "Wikipedia Day" by some users). The bandwidth and server (in San Diego) were donated by Wales. Other current and past Bomis employees who have worked on the project include Tim Shell, one of the cofounders of Bomis and its current CEO, and programmer Jason Richey. The domain was eventually changed to the present wikipedia.org when the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation was launched as its new parent organisation, prompting the use of a .org domain to denote its non-commercial nature. In March 2007, the word wiki became a newly recognised English word.

In May 2001, a wave of non-English Wikipedias was launched — in Catalan, Chinese, Dutch, Esperanto, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish; these were soon joined by Arabic and Hungarian. In September, Polish was added and further commitment to the multilingual provision of Wikipedia was made. At the end of the year, Afrikaans, Norwegian, and Serbocroatian versions were announced.

PayPal

PayPal is the safer, easier way to pay and get paid online. The service allows anyone to pay in any way they prefer, including through credit cards, bank accounts, buyer credit or account balances, without sharing financial information.

PayPal has quickly become a global leader in online payment solutions with more than 153 million accounts worldwide. Available in 190 markets and 17 currencies around the world, PayPal enables global ecommerce by making payments possible across different locations, currencies, and languages.

PayPal has received more than 20 awards for excellence from the internet industry and the business community -most recently the 2006 Webby Award for Best Financial Services Site and the 2006 Webby People's Voice Award for Best Financial Services Site.

Located in San Jose, California, PayPal was founded in 1998 and was acquired by eBay in 2002.

History

PayPal is the result of a March 2000 merger between Confinity and X.com. Confinity was founded in December 1998 by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek, initially as a Palm Pilot payments and cryptography company. Both Confinity and X.com launched their websites in late 1999. X.com was founded by Elon Musk in March 1999, initially as an Internet financial services company. Both companies were located on University Avenue in Palo Alto. Confinity's website was initially focused on reconciling beamed payments from Palm Pilots with email payments as a feature and X.com's website initially included financial services with email payments as a feature.

At Confinity, many of the initial recruits were alumni of The Stanford Review, also founded by Peter Thiel, and most early engineers hailed from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, recruited by Max Levchin. On the X.com side, Elon Musk recruited a wide range of technical and business personnel, including many that were critical to the combined company's success, such as Amy Klement, Sal Giambanco, Roelof Botha, Sanjay Bhargava and Jeremy Stoppelman.

To block potentially fraudulent access by automated systems, PayPal devised a system (see CAPTCHA) of making the user enter numbers from a blurry picture, which they coined the Gausebeck-Levchin test. According to Eric M. Jackson, author of the book The PayPal Wars, PayPal invented this system now in common use; however, there is evidence AltaVista used a CAPTCHA as early as 1997, before PayPal existed. The neutrality of The PayPal Wars, which was self-published by Eric Jackson through his company World Ahead Publishing, funded in part by Peter Thiel, is disputed. eBay watched the rise in volume of online payments and realized its fit with online auctions. eBay purchased Billpoint in May 1999, prior to the existence of PayPal. eBay made Billpoint the official payment system of eBay, dubbing it "eBay Payments", but cut the functionality of Billpoint by narrowing it to only payments made for eBay auctions.

For this reason, PayPal was listed in several times as many auctions as Billpoint. In February of 2000, there were approximately an average of 200,000 daily auctions advertising the PayPal service while Billpoint (in beta) had only 4,000 auctions. By April of 2000 there were more than 1,000,000 auctions promoting the PayPal service. PayPal was able to turn the corner and become the first dot-com to IPO after the September 11 attacks.

eBay

The eBay Company

eBay Inc. pioneers communities built on commerce, sustained by trust, and inspired by opportunity. eBay brings together millions of people every day on a local, national and international basis through an array of websites that focus on commerce, payments and communications.

The eBay Marketplace

The eBay Marketplace creates a powerful online platform for the sale of goods and services by a passionate community of individuals and small businesses. On any given day, there are millions of items available through auction-style and fixed-price trading. With millions of buyers and sellers worldwide, eBay offers localized sites in the following markets.

History

The online auction web site was founded in San Jose, California on September 3, 1995 by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb, part of a larger personal site that included, among other things, Omidyar's own tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Ebola virus.

The very first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer for $14.83. Astonished, Omidyar contacted the winning bidder and asked if he understood that the laser pointer was broken. In his responding email, the buyer explained: "I'm a collector of broken laser pointers." The frequently repeated story that eBay was founded to help Omidyar's fiancée trade PEZ Candy dispensers was fabricated by a public relations manager in 1997 to interest the media. This was revealed in Adam Cohen's 2002 book and confirmed by eBay.

Chris Agarpao was hired as eBay's first employee and Jeff Skoll was hired as the first president of the company in 1996. In November 1996, eBay entered into its first third-party licensing deal, with a company called Electronic Travel Auction to use SmartMarket Technology to sell plane tickets and other travel products. The company officially changed the name of its service from AuctionWeb to eBay in September 1997. Originally, the site belonged to Echo Bay Technology Group, Omidyar's consulting firm. Omidyar had tried to register the domain name echobay.combut found it already taken by the Echo Bay Mines, a gold mining company, so he shortened it to his second choice, eBay.com.

eBay went public in 1998, and both Omidyar and Skoll became instant billionaires. The company purchased PayPal in October 2002.

Items and services

Millions of collectibles, appliances, computers, furniture, equipment, vehicles, and other miscellaneous items are listed, bought, and sold daily. In 2005, eBay launched its Business & Industrial category, breaking into the industrial surplus business. Some items are rare and valuable, while many others are dusty gizmos that would have been discarded if not for the thousands of eager bidders worldwide. Anything can be sold as long as it is not illegal or does not violate the eBay Prohibited and Restricted Items policy. Services and intangibles can be sold too. Large international companies, such as IBM, sell their newest products and offer services on eBay using competitive auctions and fixed-priced storefronts. Regional searches of the database make shipping slightly faster and cheaper. Separate eBay sites such as eBay US and eBay UK allow the users to trade using the local currency as an additional option to PayPal. Software developers can create applications that integrate with eBay through the eBay API by joining the eBay Developers Program. As of June 2005, there were over 15,000 members in the eBay Developers Program, comprising a broad range of companies creating software applications to support eBay buyers and sellers as well as eBay Affiliates.

Controversy has arisen over certain items put up for bid. For instance, in late 1999 a man offered one of his kidneys for auction on eBay, attempting to profit from the potentially lucrative (and, in the United States, illegal) market for transplantable human organs. On other occasions, people and even entire towns have been listed, often as a joke or to garner free publicity. In general, the company removes auctions that violate its terms of service agreement within a short time after hearing of the auction from an outsider; the company's policy is to not pre-approve transactions. eBay is also an easy place for unscrupulous sellers to market counterfeit merchandise, which can be difficult for novice buyers to distinguish without careful studying of the auction description.

eBay's Latin American partner is MercadoLibre.

eBay's rivals include Amazon.com Marketplace.

CNET's Download.com

Download.com is an Internet download directory website, launched in 1996 as a part of CNET.

Download.com offers content in four major categories: Software (including PC, Mac, and mobile), Music, Games, and Videos, offered for download via FTP from Download.com's servers or third-party servers. Videos are streams (at present) and music is all free MP3 downloads, or occasionally rights-managed WMAs or streams.

The Software section includes over 100,000 freeware, shareware, and try-first downloads. Downloads are often rated and reviewed by editors, and also contain a summary of the file from the software publisher, and one or more screenshots. Users may also write reviews and log their ratings on a scale of 1-5 stars.

Users should be aware of the fact that the software on the site may be outdated by several months or even years. By using it only as a search tool and then visiting the publishers webpage for the actual download, users get the latest version.


Downloads free

Downloading all software is free. Some software titles are trial versions; many are freeware and shareware. All music downloads and video streams are free. There is no charge by Download.com to access any content on the site.

Software publishers are permitted to distribute their titles for free via CNET's Upload.com site, or for a fee structure that offers enhancements.

In 2004, Download.com Music was launched to replace the defunct MP3.com. One may download music in a variety of genres for free from this area of the site, and the artists range from amateurs to professionals. Artists may upload their information and songs to the site for free. All submissions go through a review process.

In July 2005, Download.com Video was launched with streaming video content in a variety of genres (Movies & TV, Sports, Animation, Music Videos, etc.). Download.com plans to offer downloadable videos in future.

Tagged

Tagged.com is a premier social networking destination and an ideal place for advertisers to reach their target audience.

Tagged provides a fun, safe, and exciting environment for people to showcase their personalities and talents, and to connect with friends and meet new ones.

Tagged is experiencing dramatic growth Advertisers love Tagged because they get clear, uncomplicated access to our audience. Our team is dedicated to making every advertiser successful and can develop and support any type of ad campaign.

Tagged.com is social networking Web site specializing in connecting its users with friends old and new. It was co-founded by Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith and launched in October 2004 by Tagged Inc. and is privately owned. The site's early innovations include the use of slides and Youtube as a part of the site’s graphical interface.

The site allows its users to send messages, leave comments, browse photos, watch videos, play games, give tags and chat.

As of August 2007, the site has 30,000,000 registered users.

Since its launch, the site has been featured in several TV, print, and online news sources, including the Wall Street Journal , BusinessWeek Online, BostonHerald.com, Adweek and Marketwatch.

MySpace

MySpace is an online community that lets you meet your friends' friends.

Create a community on MySpace and you can share photos, journals and interests with your growing network of mutual friends!

See who knows who, or how you are connected. Find out if you really are six people away from Kevin Bacon.

MySpace is for everyone:

* Friends who want to talk Online
* Single people who want to meet other Singles
* Matchmakers who want to connect their friends with other friends
* Families who want to keep in touch--map your Family Tree
* Business people and co-workers interested in networking
* Classmates and study partners
* Anyone looking for long lost friends!

Friendster

With more than 50 million members worldwide, Friendster is a leading global online social network. Friendster is focused on helping people stay in touch with friends and discover new people and things that are important to them. Online adults, 18 and up, choose Friendster to connect with friends, family, school, groups, activities and interests. Friendster prides itself in delivering a clean, user-friendly and interactive environment where users can easily connect with anyone around the world. Friendster has a growing portfolio of patents granted to the company on social networking.

Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Friendster is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures and individual investors.

History

Friendster was considered the top online social network service until around April 2004 when it was overtaken by MySpace in terms of page views, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Friendster has also received competition from all-in-one sites such as Windows Live Spaces, Yahoo! 360, and Facebook. Of late, newer websites like hi5 are posing new competition for friendster.

Google offered $30,000,000 to buy out Friendster in 2003, but they were turned down.

Friendster was funded by Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers and Benchmark Capital in October 2003 with a reported valuation of $53 million.

In April 2004, John Abrams was removed as CEO and Tim Koogle took over as interim CEO. Koogle previously served as President and CEO at Yahoo!. Koogle was later replaced by Scott Sassa in June 2004. Sassa left in May 2005 and was replaced by Taek Kwon. Taek Kwon was then succeeded by Kent Lindstrom, following a recapitalization by Kleiner and Benchmark that valued Friendster at less than one-twentieth its 2003 valuation.

Friendster's decision to remain private instead of selling to Google in 2003 is considered one of the biggest blunders of Silicon Valley, the Associated Press claims.

Best Buy

Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE: BBY) is a Fortune 100 company and the largest specialty retailer of consumer electronics in the United States and Canada, accounting for 17% of the market. The company's subsidiaries include Geek Squad, Magnolia Audio Video, and, in Canada, Future Shop. Together these operate over 1150 stores in the United States, Canada and China. The company's corporate headquarters are located in Richfield, Minnesota, USA (near Minneapolis). On June 26, 2007, Best Buy announced a 40% increase in its operations, with plans to operate over 1800 stores worldwide, including 1400 Best Buy stores in the U.S. alone.

Best Buy was named "Company of the Year" by Forbes magazine in 2004, "Specialty Retailer of the Decade" by Discount Store News in 2001, ranked in the Top 10 of "America's Most Generous Corporations" by Forbes magazine, and made Fortune Magazine's List of Most Admired Companies in 2006.

History

1966 -- Richard M. Schulze and business partner James Wheeler open Sound of Music, an audio specialty store, in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

1967 -- Sound of Music acquires Kencraft Hi-Fi Company and Bergo Company. Second and third Sound of Music stores are opened near the University of Minnesota and in downtown Minneapolis. The Sound of Music ends its first year with gross sales of $173,000.

1969 -- Sound of Music stock first traded as publicly-held company; company enacts first employee stock option plan; three stores opened in the Twin Cities area.

1970 -- Sound of Music hits the $1 million mark in annual revenues.

1979 -- Sound of Music becomes the first suppliers of video and laserdisc equipment including Panasonic, Magnavox, Sony and Sharp.

1981 -- A tornado hits the Roseville, Minnesota store on June 14. Sound of Music responds with a "Tornado Sale," and it becomes an annual event.

1983 -- Sound of Music’s board of directors approves a new corporate name: Best Buy Co., Inc.; opens first superstore in Burnsville, Minnesota, featuring expanded selling space, a wide assortment of discounted brand-name goods, central service, and warehouse distribution; stores begin selling appliances and videocassette recorders.

1987 -- Best Buy (symbol BBY) debuts on the New York Stock Exchange with an offering of 8.3 million shares.

1989 -- Best Buy unveils a new “grab-and-go” store format. Best Buy’s brand logo changes to the familiar yellow tag.

1995 -- Best Buy develops and implements the Standard Operating Platform (SOP) to support and manage every aspect of the company’s business; the Answer Center kiosk is nominated for the Computerworld Smithsonian Award.

1997 -- Best Buy becomes the first national retailer to sell DVD hardware and software.

1998 -- Best Buy sells its 1-millionth DVD, a year after the DVD’s debut. The company also begins selling high-definition television.

2000 -- Best Buy enters the online retailing business by launching Bestbuy.com; Best Buy acquires Magnolia Hi-Fi (renamed Magnolia Audio Video in 2003), a retailer of high-end consumer electronics; music Compact Cassettes are removed from most stores.

2001 -- Best Buy acquires the Canada-based electronics-chain Future Shop Ltd. and marks the company's entrance to the international marketplace; Best Buy acquires Musicland, a mall -based retailer for music and entertainment software; Best Buy launches Redline Entertainment, an independent music label and action-sports video distributor.

2002 -- Brad Anderson succeeds Schulze as Best Buy's CEO; the company acquires Geek Squad®, a 24-hour computer support taskforce; first Canadian Best Buy store opens in Mississauga, Ontario west of Toronto.

2003 -- U.S. Best Buy stores surpass the 600 mark; the company opens its first global sourcing office in Shanghai; Fortune magazine ranks Best Buy #4 on its list of most admired U.S. companies in the specialty retailers industry; the corporate offices are consolidated in one headquarters campus; Best Buy divests itself of Musicland; the company begins to segment their stores, which is considered a major part of the company's "customer centricity" transformation; the Reward Zone loyalty program and the Sweet Tracks Christmas music series are both introduced in the U.S.

2004 -- Forbes magazine names Best Buy “Company of the Year.” Geek Squad precincts are opened in every Best Buy store nationwide, offering in-store service during store business hours; Best Buy offers Learning Place, its post-purchase, online customer service center. Best Buy customers purchase secure access to interactive product user-manuals, live text/voice chat service and a discussion forum to use, fix and extend the products they buy.

2005 -- Sound & Vision magazine awards Best Buy its first ever "Retailer Innovation Award" for its Magnolia store within a store concept and other retail innovations.

2006 -- Best Buy acquires a majority interest in the retail chain Jiangsu Five Star Appliance Co., Ltd. China’s fourth-largest appliance and consumer electronics retailer. On November 17th, the company signs a 10 year lease to open a 4-floor store later in 2007 at the former Virgin Megastore on trendy and upscale Newbury Street in Boston, Massachusetts. In late December, Best Buy soft-opens its first Best Buy-branded store in Shanghai; an 80,000 square foot location (the largest in the company). Best Buy opens its 800th store in Chicago, Illinois.

2007 -- On January 26, 2007 the first Best Buy in China had its grand opening - touted as the largest Best Buy in existence James Wheeler spoke for 45 mins for the grand opening. In March, Best Buy announced plans to purchase Seattle, WA based Speakeasy, Inc., a broadband and VOIP services provider. The company continues to explore new markets, including current construction of two new stores in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the announcement of test stores in Mexico and Turkey.

Amazon

Amazon.com, Inc is an American e-commerce company based in Seattle, Washington. It was one of the first major companies to sell goods over the Internet and was one of the iconic stocks of the late 1990s dot-com bubble. After the bubble burst, Amazon faced skepticism about its business model, but it made its first annual profit in 2003.

Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, and launched in 1995, Amazon.com began as an online bookstore, though it soon diversified its product lines, adding VHSs, DVDs, music CDs, MP3s, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and more.

Amazon has established separate websites in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, France, China, and Japan. It ships globally on selected products.

History

Amazon was founded in 1994, spurred by what Bezos refers to as his "regret minimization framework," i.e. his effort to fend off late-in-life regret for not staking a claim in the Internet gold rush. It is common lore that Bezos wrote its business plan while he and his wife drove a 1988 Chevrolet Blazer from Fort Worth, Texas to Bellevue, Washington.

The company began operating as an online bookstore under the name Cadabra.com (as in abracadabra), a name that Bezos quickly abandoned due to its sounding like "cadaver". While the largest brick-and-mortar bookstores and mail-order catalogs for books might offer 200,000 titles, an online bookstore could offer many times more. Bezos renamed his company "Amazon" after the world's most voluminous river. The company was incorporated in 1994 in the state of Washington, began service in July 1995, and was reincorporated in 1996 in Delaware. The first book ever sold by Amazon.com was Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought. Amazon.com had its initial public offering on May 15, 1997, trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the symbol AMZN at an IPO price of US$18.00 per share (equivalent to US$1.50 after three stock splits during the late 1990s).

Amazon's initial business plan was unusual: the company did not expect to turn a profit for four to five years. In retrospect, the strategy was effective. Amazon grew at a steady pace in the late 1990s while many other Internet companies grew at a blindingly fast pace. Amazon's "slow" growth caused a number of its stockholders to complain, saying that the company was not reaching profitability fast enough. When the Dot-com bubble burst and many e-companies went out of business, Amazon persevered and finally turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2002: a meager US$5 million, just 1¢ per share, on revenues of over US$1 billion, but it was important symbolically. The firm has since remained profitable: net income was US$35.3 million in 2003, US$588.5 million in 2004, US$359 million in 2005, and US$190 million in 2006 (including a US$662 million charge on R&D in 2006). Nevertheless, the firm's cumulative profits remain negative, since the positive performance of recent years is not yet sufficient to wipe out the losses of the past, as of 2005 the accumulated deficit stood at US$2.03 billion.

Revenue continued to grow thanks to product diversification and international presence: US$3.9 billion in 2002, US$5.3 billion in 2003, US$6.9 billion in 2004, US$8.5 billion in 2005, and US$10.7 billion in 2006. On November 21, 2005, Amazon entered the S&P 500 index, replacing the venerable AT&T after it merged with SBC Communications.

Time Magazine named Bezos its 1999 Person of the Year in recognition of the company's success in popularizing online shopping.

Altavista

Overview:
AltaVista, a business of Overture Services, Inc., is a leading provider of search services and technology. AltaVista continues to advance Internet search with new technologies and features designed to improve the search experience for consumers. Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., AltaVista has a rich history of innovation embodied in 61 search-related patents. For more information, see www.altavista.com.

Our Goal

A cornerstone of AltaVista's mission is to provide access to information to the global community, and we are dedicated to setting the standard for search technology and how people find information. As the Web becomes larger and more complex, finding relevant information efficiently has become increasingly vital to Internet users. By innovating our proven search technology and adapting to the changing complexity of the Internet, we help users find what they need quickly and intuitively. Our topical searches aggregate information into highly segmented indexes, helping users refine their searches and quickly access the most pertinent and useful information. The company's `Power of Precision' philosophy underlies everything we do as we strive to deliver the most powerful search tools available. We continue to evolve with new initiatives dedicated to continually improving freshness, quality and relevancy to help users get the precise results they seek.

A History of Innovation

AltaVista, which means "a view from above," was inspired by the creation of big ideas from a team of experts with a fascination for keeping track of information. During the spring of 1995, scientists at Digital Equipment Corporation's Research lab in Palo Alto, CA, devised a way to store every word of every HTML page on the Internet in a fast, searchable index. This led to AltaVista's development of the first searchable, full-text database on the World Wide Web.

Other notable AltaVista inventions include the first-ever multi-lingual search capability on the Internet and the first search technology to support Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages. We are proud of Babel Fish, the Web's first Internet machine translation service that can translate words, phrases or entire Web sites to and from English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian and Russian.

Lycos

Lycos is a search engine and web portal centered around broadband entertainment content. It began as a search engine research project by Dr. Michael Loren Mauldin of Carnegie Mellon University in 1994. It was incorporated in 1995 and went on to become one of the most visited online destinations in the world with a global presence in more than 40 countries. Lycos merged with Terra Networks of Spain in May of 2000, forming a new company, Terra Lycos, creating one of the world's largest Internet companies. In Oct. 2004, Lycos was sold a second time to Daum Communications Corporation, the 2nd largest Internet portal in Korea, becoming Lycos, Inc. Lycos remains a top 25 Internet destination in the US, and the 13th largest online property worldwide according to comScore Media Metrix. Lycos also remains a top 5 Internet portal, behind Yahoo, MSN, AOL and MySpace (comScore Media Metrix).

Introduction

Shortly after the development of the search engine, Lycos, Inc. was formed with approximately $2M in venture capital funding from CMGI. The Founder and CEO of Lycos from inception was Bob Davis, a native of Boston who incorporated the company in Massachusetts and concentrated on building it into an advertising-supported Web Portal. Lycos grew from a crowded field in 1995 to become the most visited web portal in the world in the spring of 1999.

In 1996, the company had a successful IPO and in 1997 became one of the first profitable internet businesses in the world. Over the course of the next several years Lycos acquired nearly two dozen high profile internet brands including Tripod, Gamesville, WhoWhere, Wired Digital, Quote.com, Angelfire, and Raging Bull.

Lycos Europe was a joint venture between Bertelsmann and Lycos, but has always been a distinct corporate entity. Although Lycos Europe is the largest of the overseas ventures, several other companies also entered into joint venture agreements, including Lycos Canada, Lycos Korea, and Lycos Asia.

Near the peak of the internet bubble in May of 2000 Lycos announced its intent to be acquired by Terra Networks, S.A., the internet arm of the Spanish telecommunications giant, Telefonica, for $5.4 billion. However, by this time the business had peaked and Lycos was being eclipsed by other search giants such as Yahoo, Ask, and Google. The acquisition price represented a nearly 3,000 times return on the initial venture capital investment in Lycos and about 20 times its initial public offering valuation. The transaction closed in October of 2000. The merged company was renamed Terra Lycos yet the Lycos brand was the US franchise. Overseas, the company continued to be known as Terra Networks, S.A. Davis left the company shortly after the merger was completed to join Highland Capital Partners, a premier venture capital fund, where he now serves as a Managing General partner and concentrates on internet investments.

In August 2, 2004, Terra announced that it was selling Lycos to Seoul, South Korea-based Daum Communications Corporation for $95.4 million in cash, less than 1% of Terra's initial $12.5 billion investment. In October 2004, the transaction closed, and the company name was changed back to Lycos, Inc. The remaining Terra half of the business was subsequently reacquired by Telefónica.

Under new ownership, Lycos began to refocus its strategy in 2005, moving away from a search-centric portal, toward a community destination for broadband entertainment content. With a new management team in place, Lycos also began divesting in properties that were not core to its new strategy. In July 2006, Wired News, which had been part of Lycos since the purchase of Wired Digital in 1998, was sold to Conde Nast and re-merged with Wired Magazine. The Lycos Finance division, best known for Quote.com and Raging Bull.com, was sold to FT Interactive Data Corporation in February 2006, while its online dating site Matchmaker.com was sold to Date.com. In 2006, Lycos also regained ownership of the Lycos trademark from Carnegie Mellon University, becoming Lycos, Inc. once again.

During much of 2006, Lycos focused on introducing first-to-market products and services including the launch of Lycos Phone, the Internet's first free VoIP integrated communication platform, combining IM, video chat, real-time video on demand and MP3 Player. In August, 2006, Lycos also released its new Lycos Mail product, an industry-defining email system built for sending and receiving mega files, including unlimited size file attachments for video, music and photos. In Nov. 2006, Lycos began to roll out Web 2.0 applications centered around social media, including the Web's first watch & chat video application, with the launch of its Lycos Cinema platform. In Feb. 2007, the second iteration of its watch & chat proprietary technology launched with Lycos MIX, a tool allowing users to pull video clips from YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video and MySpace Video, creating playlists where other users can add video, comments and chat in real-time.

MSN

MSN (an abbreviation of Microsoft Network) is a collection of Internet services provided by Microsoft. Initially released on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of Windows 95. The range of services provided has changed significantly since its release. The Hotmail webmail service was amongst the first (as of May 7, 2007 it is being replaced by Windows Live Hotmail), followed by the instant messenger service MSN Messenger, which has been replaced by Windows Live Messenger. According to Alexa.com, MSN.com is currently ranked 2nd amongst all websites for Traffic Rank.

In large part, MSN was rebranded in 2005 to Windows Live, which saw the release of Windows Live Hotmail (previously Windows Live Mail) and Windows Live Messenger. Microsoft overhauled its online software and services in a climate of increasing competition from rivals such as Google, and Yahoo!. The Windows Live brand is currently being rolled out service-by-service, with rebranded services being classed as Beta tests initially. It is anticipated that the MSN service will aim at the personal and family user, whilst Windows Live will be a dedicated search facility for various media.

In the United States and Canada, MSN is not only a content provider and search engine, it is additionally an Internet Service Provider. With around 9 million subscribers, MSN is the second largest Internet Service Provider in the United States behind AOL service with about 26.5 million. In other countries, MSN uses underwriters for their services; in the UK, Microsoft use BT group.

The term "MSN" has come to be synonymous with MSN Messenger in Internet slang. To use MSN services, users must have a Windows Live ID account, an account system which allows access to all of the MSN facilities. One can sign-up using any e-mail address, and can then use personalized MSN and Windows Live features requiring the use of a Windows Live ID. These personalized features include My MSN, MSN Hotmail (now Windows Live Hotmail) and the ability to sign into Windows Live Messenger, and the now retired (as from Windows Vista) Windows Messenger. As of 2007, MSN has more than 225 million users.

In 2007 Microsoft plans to set up in Shanghai, China, a research and development center for MSN service. It will be the company's first center of such kind situated outside of the United States. Being based in Shanghai's Zizhu Science Park, the research and development center will develop Internet software. Its set up is estimated at $20 million. Microsoft, in the new center, will have a technical support team for its MSN service. In the future, the company hopes MSN Messenger will play an important role in everyday life of Chinese teenagers and young professionals. Several setbacks caused Microsoft to create its own facility for MSN service. One of such setback is the resignation of Luo Chuan, who headed the Windows Live unit in China and who was also responsible for Chinese MSN portal.

History

MSN was originally conceived as an online service provider in the vein of America Online, supplying local and proprietary content through an interface integrated into Windows 95's Windows Explorer.

The MSN group began life in the Advanced Technology Group, headed by Nathan Myhrvold and group was called AT-OLS (Advanced Technologies Online Systems group).

Following the rapid adoption of the Internet, partly fueled by the built-in IP protocol capabilities of Windows 95, the service was then rebranded as "MSN Classic" and a new incarnation was created, known as "MSN 2.0," which combined access to the Internet with web-based proprietary content in the new "MSN Program Viewer." The MSN Program Viewer was essentially an animated, stylized and streamlined interface on top of an Internet Explorer engine. When users logged in, they'd be presented with a several different "Channels" which were essentially categories for the various types of content available on MSN.

The Program Viewer was accompanied by MSN Quick Launch, which say in the Windows Notification Area. Both had menus that could be dynamically updated to guide users to content.

The new content made extensive use of multimedia and interactive features, including VBScript and early implementations of Macromedia Flash for animations. Interactive multimedia content was presented in a TV-like format, dubbed "MSN Shows." The many "shows" and content sites included an interactive online week nightly game show called "Netwits," a snarky site addressing women's issues called "UnderWire," and a regular celebrity interview and Web-surfing session called "One Click Away." These new destinations supplemented reinvented, Web-based, highly interactive of original MSN content such as CarPoint and Expedia.

While the "MSN Shows" approach was unique and innovative, the content wasn't easily accessible by users with low-end computers and slower dial-up connections (broadband Internet access hadn't yet hit the mainstream). The aggressive adoption of multimedia content during the late nineties proved to be ahead of its time, as the service was not as successful as hoped. After abandoning the "Shows" format, the service was again rebranded--this time as a more traditional Internet service in the MSN 2.5 release, with some exclusive content. The MSN Program Viewer was essentially abandoned in favor of defaulting users to the regular, more-featured Internet Explorer interface.

In 1999, the largely underutilized MSN.com domain was reinvented as both a Web portal and as a brand for a family of sites produced inside Microsoft's Interactive Media Group (IMG) and put MSN in direct competition with sites such as Yahoo!. Because the new format opened up MSN's content to the world, for free, the subscription service was rebranded MSN Internet Access.

The new MSN.com had a whole family of sites, including originals, content channels that were carried over from shows (although no shows remained), and new features were rapidly added. MSN.com also became a successor to the default Internet Explorer start page which, previous to MSN.com's reinvention, went to Microsoft Internet Home (a.k.a. home.microsoft.com, or, internally, "hmc").

Yahoo

Company Overview

Who We Are

Founded in 1994 by Stanford Ph.D. students David Filo and Jerry Yang, Yahoo! began as a hobby and has evolved into a leading global brand that has changed the way people communicate with each other, conduct transactions and access, share, and create information. Today, led by an executive team that includes CEO and Chief Yahoo Jerry Yang, President Susan Decker, Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen, and Co-Founder/Chief Yahoo David Filo, Yahoo! Inc. has become the world's largest global online network of integrated services with more than 500 million users worldwide. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with a presence in more than 20 markets and regions around the globe.
What We Do

Yahoo!'s mission is to connect people to their passions, their communities and the world's knowledge.

How We Make a Difference

Yahoo! is also committed to empowering its users and employees through programs, products, and services that inspire people to make a positive impact on their communities. Yahoo! for Good connects people with causes through our products and services, as well as through partnerships with nonprofits such as Global Green, Network for Good, and DonorsChoose. Yahoo! also channels the generosity of its employees through the Yahoo! Employee Foundation, a grassroots philanthropic organization that brings together the talents, time, and financial resources of Yahoo! employees. The foundation has given millions of dollars in grants to organizations around the world.

History

Early 1994-1996

In January 1994, Stanford graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo created a website named "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web." Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web was a directory of other websites, organized in a hierarchy, as opposed to a searchable index of pages.

In April 1994, "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" was renamed "Yahoo!". Filo and Yang said they selected the name because they liked the word's general definition, as in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." The name can also be a backronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle". Its URL was akebono.stanford.edu/yahoo.

By the end of 1994, Yahoo had already received one million hits. Yang and Filo realized their website had massive business potential, and on 1 March 1995, Yahoo was incorporated. On 12 April 1996, Yahoo had its initial public offering, raising $33.8 million dollars, by selling 2.6 million shares at $13 each.

"Yahoo" had already been trademarked for barbecue sauce, knives (by EBSCO Industries) and human propelled watercraft (by Old Town Canoe Co.). Therefore, in order to get the trademark, Yang and Filo added the exclamation mark to the name. However, the exclamation mark is often omitted when referring to Yahoo.

Growth (1997-1999)

Like many search engines and web directories, Yahoo diversified into a Web portal. In the late 1990s, Yahoo, MSN, Lycos, Excite and other Web portals were growing rapidly. Web portal providers rushed to acquire companies to expand their range of services, in the hope of increasing the time a user stays at the portal.

On 8 March 1997, Yahoo acquired online communications company Four11. Four11's webmail service, Rocketmail, became Yahoo! Mail. Yahoo also acquired ClassicGames.com and turned it into Yahoo! Games. Yahoo then acquired direct marketing company Yoyodyne Entertainment, Inc. on 12 October 1998. On 28 January 1999, Yahoo acquired web hosting provider GeoCities. Another company Yahoo acquired was eGroups, which became Yahoo! Groups after the acquisition on 28 June 2000. Yahoo also launched Yahoo! Messenger on 21 July 1999.

When acquiring companies, Yahoo often changed the relevant terms of service. For example, they claimed intellectual property rights for content on their servers, unlike the companies they acquired. As a result, many of the acquisitions were controversial and unpopular with users of the existing services.

Dot-com bubble (2000-2001)

On 3 January 2000, at the height of the Dot-com boom, Yahoo stocks closed at an all-time high of $475.00 a share. 16 days later, shares in Yahoo Japan became the first stocks in Japanese history to trade at over ¥100,000,000, reaching a price of 101.4 million yen ($962,140 at that time).

On 7 February 2000, Yahoo.com was brought to a halt for a few hours as it was the victim of a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS). On the next day, its shares rose about $16, or 4.5 percent as the failure was blamed on hackers rather than on an internal glitch, unlike a fault with eBay earlier that year.

During the dot-com boom, the cable news station CNBC also reported that Yahoo and eBay were discussing a 50/50 merger. Although the merger never materialized the two companies decided to form a marketing/advertising alliance six years later in 2006.

On 26 June 2000, Yahoo and Google signed an agreement which retained Google as the default world-wide-web search engine for yahoo.com following a beta trial in 1999.

Post dot-com bubble (2002-2006)

Yahoo was one of the few surviving large Internet companies after the dot-com bubble burst. Nevertheless, on September 26, 2001, Yahoo stocks closed at an all-time low of $8.11.

Yahoo formed partnerships with telecommunications and Internet providers to create content-rich broadband services to compete with AOL. On 3 June 2002, SBC and Yahoo launched a national co-branded dial service. In July 2003, BT Openworld announced an alliance with Yahoo On 23 August 2005, Yahoo and Verizon launched an integrated DSL service.

In late 2002, Yahoo began to bolster its search services by acquiring other search engines. In December 2002, Yahoo acquired Inktomi. In February 2003, Yahoo acquired Konfabulator and rebranded it Yahoo! Widgets, a desktop application and in July 2003, it acquired Overture Services, Inc. and its subsidiaries AltaVista and AlltheWeb. On February 18, 2004, Yahoo dropped Google-powered results and returned to using its own technology to provide search results.

Google then released Gmail, its webmail service offering 1 GB of storage, on 1 April 2004. Yahoo responded by upgrading the storage of all free Yahoo Mail accounts from 4 MB to 100 MB, and all Yahoo Mail Plus accounts to 2 GB. In 2007, Yahoo took out the storage meters and made the storage limit unlimited. On 9 July 2004, Yahoo acquired e-mail provider Oddpost to add an Ajax interface to Yahoo! Mail Beta. Google also released Google Talk, a Voice over IP and instant messaging service, on 24 August 2005. On 13 October 2005, Yahoo and Microsoft announced that Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger would become interoperable.

Yahoo continued acquiring companies to expand its range of services, particularly Web 2.0 services. Yahoo Launch became Yahoo! Music on 9 February 2005. On 20 March 2005, Yahoo purchased photo sharing service Flickr. On 29 March 2005, the company launched its blogging and social networking service Yahoo! 360°. In June 2005, Yahoo acquired blo.gs, a service based on RSS feed aggregation. Yahoo then bought online social event calendar Upcoming.org on 4 October 2005. Yahoo acquired social bookmark site del.icio.us on 9 December 2005 and then playlist sharing community webjay on 9 January 2006.

On 27 August 2007, Yahoo released a new version of Yahoo! Mail that makes it possible for users to send instant messages to the largest combined instant messaging (IM) community including users of Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger, to send free text messages to mobile phones in the US, Canada, India and the Philippines.