Definition of Yahoo - What it is, Meaning and Concept

Yahoo! Inc., also known simply as Yahoo , is an American company focused on providing Internet-related services.This company has a directory, a search engine, virtual stores and various applications, among which A widely used email system appears worldwide.

The giant Yahoo was created during the first days of 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo , two students of the Stanford University .Two years later the firm began trading on the New York Stock Exchange .

In relation to why it was baptized as Yahoo , it cannot be said too much because the information is not very accurate.The firmer version holds that the father of Filo He used to comment that his son and Yang were two "yahoos" , a term used in literature to name a wild and atrocious creature. Jonathan Swift (responsible for the work "Gulliver's Travels" ) and Jorge Luis Borges are some of the writers that used the concept.Another version argues that Yahoo is the acronym for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle .

In February 2008 , Yahoo received a purchase offer from Microsoft valued at $ 44.6 billion .The proposal was rejected by the company when considering it Very low.A year and a half later, s however, Yahoo and Microsoft established an agreement regarding the use of the search engine.

Yahoo! Mail or Mail Yahoo! is one of the most popular services of Yahoo .It works under the webmail mode (an email client that acts through an interface web and that is accessible from a browser ) and has several million users. Yahoo! Messenger , an instant messaging application, is a complementary application to mail.

In the shadow of Google

Without a doubt, Yahoo enjoyed a bright start; Anyone who has had the opportunity to surf the Internet in the mid-1990s will surely remember that their first email box was hosted on the servers of that company.What nobody knew is that in September 1998, a project that had also begun with the work of two university students would attract the eye of the cyber world: Google.

Despite the advantage that Yahoo had over its newborn competition, Google did not take long to acquire a great popularity, which did not start from anything other than the user experience: more and better results, greater speed and a simple and direct design.

Another company that fell into oblivion after its emergence was AltaVista, which so far had ranked first with Yahoo; and perhaps there is something in the names that is partly responsible for the success or failure of such a company.In English, it is possible to convert any term into a verb, adjective or noun without much effort, given the flexibility of the language; phrases like "Do you Yahoo?" (Yahoo eas ?) or "Google it" (Googl ealo ) are marketing tools that have given very good results for both companies , and that AltaVista clearly could not take advantage of, given the extension and shape of its brand.

As if the defeat in the field of search engines had not been enough, ten years after the launch of Yahoo, Google presented GMail, an email service that had the particularity of offering 1GB of initial space, which would grow constantly, among other features that would make him immensely popular and, once again, would shade his predecessors.

Yahoo does not offer negligible services, and has the merit of having tried to adapt forever to continue claiming its market space.Its biggest problem is that it relies on aesthetics instead of performance; Of course, the average consumer, lacking interest in technology, values ​​this aspect more than his own time and, given that this type of user is counted by tens of thousands, it is understandable Yahoo continue alive.