Will wrestle for climate change

Posted May 1st, 2007 at 9:58 pm by Nicki Dugan, Blog Editor

 No Comments / Filed in: Those Crazy Yahoos, Working at Yahoo!

What sort of incentive do you provide employees to encourage them to reduce their use of non-renewable resources by 20%? A chance to watch your founders sumo wrestle each other.

For the week prior to Earth Day, Yahoos at our Sunnyvale headquarters were challenged to do their part to reduce our impact on the environment. They rose to the challenge and turned off lights in conference rooms, took the stairs, made do with less air conditioning, avoided printing or went double-sided, used mugs, ditched their commutes for public transportation or carpools, and ate a little less meat. And today, we collected our payment.

Why sumo wrestling, you might ask? It goes back to our roots. Co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo were graduate exchange students together in Kyoto in 1992 while at Stanford and got addicted to sumo wrestling. They named their first servers after sumo greats Akebono and Konishiki and Jerry’s first collection of web pages was dedicated to the sport. Jerry and David held their first match for employees in 1999 and, with some prodding, agreed to a rematch to mark this impressive achievement.

We’re busy editing the priceless video to post in the next few days. In the meantime, to figure out who won, check out the photos here and here.

UPDATE: As promised, here’s the video.

Jerry watches as David dons his protective wig helmet

Sumo Jerry, appropriately embellished with greenery

Sumo David, flanked by paparazzi

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