Yodel Anecdotal » anniversary

Our Sweet 16

Yahoo — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 05:00:50 +0000

It may be hard to believe, but only 16 years ago the Internet was a mostly undiscovered frontier. Jerry Yang and David Filo – Stanford Ph.D. students at the time – started dabbling in Web searches as a hobby. As David has said, “The Internet was a great place to waste time.”

But their passion for locating, identifying and editing information stored on the Internet – soon to be known as “David and Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web” – evolved into much more than a hobby, of course.

In March 1995, Yahoo! was incorporated as a business, and by April 1996, our company stock was already being sold publicly on the NASDAQ.

Today, more than 13,000 people from Sunnyvale to Singapore are proud to call themselves Yahoos.

Thank you for celebrating with us all these years–and here’s to many more!

Where were you in 1995?

Nicki Dugan — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:42:03 +0000

The year is 1995. Bill Clinton is president. Jerry Garcia is still singing. Toy Story is leading at the box office. Everyone is reading “Angela’s Ashes.” The O.J. Simpson trial is pre-empting soap operas. “Java” is still a cup of coffee. Kevin Mitnick has just been arrested for hacking. The Dow Jones has closed above 4,000 for the first time. Pamela Anderson wed Tommy Lee in a white bikini. Will Ferrell is about to become a household name. Email is something for computer science geeks. And Yahoo! is no longer a way to blow off a Ph.D. dissertation.

Fourteen years ago today, Jerry and David officially incorporated Yahoo!. And, oh, how the world has changed. Remember when faxes were the fastest, most efficient way communicate in writing? When the newspaper landing on your doormat was your best portal to world news? When calling catalog 800#s was the only way to beat driving to the store? That crazy sound of a modem connecting to the Interwebz?

We’d like to think we had something to do with the revolution. Here’s to lots more of that. Happy 14th Birthday, all you Yahoos.

Our business plan (love that it was written six months after our founding)

Our founders in their tidy Stanford University trailer

Our first real headquarters (110 Pioneer Way, Mountain View, CA)

Our homepage in 1995

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

The 4th of Flickr

Nicki Dugan — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 07:27:20 +0000

The walls of San Francisco’s 111 Minna Gallery were plastered tonight with more than 2,800 photos taken by Flickr devotees — about as many as are uploaded to Flickr per minute on your average Saturday night. They were hand-selected from the pool created in honor of Flickr’s 4th birthday, which the faithful were out in force to celebrate.

There were photos of newborns, wombats, hedgehogs, Vietnam, the Alps, Groucho impersonators, numbers, shoes, coffee, the Batmobile, libraries, suck-ups, and, my favorite, rubber duckies. Printed by Photoworks San Francisco, they created a stunning backdrop as Flickerites wolfed down catering by Say Cheese and 400 cupcakes from Kara’s Cupcakes. Never was there a party with more cameras in tow.

All walks of Flickr life were on hand, including a dozen thrift-store brides from the Brides of March, adding a Flickrly appropriate dose of iconoclasm to the evening.

Check out our photos, along with the bevy taken by fellow guests here. Happy Birthday, Flickr.