Headquartered in Sunnyvale,
California, Yahoo! Inc. (Ya
hoo!) is one of the leading global Internet brands with its
network in more than 20 markets and regions all over the world.
The company's services include search engine, Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo!
Mail, news, and social media websites and services. On November 17,
2008, Yahoo!'s founder and Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang announced that
he would step down from his position after the company selected the
new CEO. The move came after criticism received by Yang for his
inefficiencies to lead the company, rejection of
the Microsoft deal, the failure to achieve the search advertising
partnership with Google and lay-offs of 15,000 employees. On January 13, 2009,
Carol Bartz was appointed as the new Chief Executive Officer of Yahoo! to lead
the company and to reinvigorate it. Investors and analysts were skeptical if
the leadership transition would help Yahoo! implement new strategies
for growth.
David Filo (David) and Jerry Yang, Ph.Ds in Electrical Engineering
from the Stanford University, are the founders of Yahoo!. In the year
1994, they both launched a new website called `Jerry and David's Guide to
the World Wide Web (WWW)'. The website was renamed Yahoo! and
by the year end, Yahoo! had received about one million visitors to
its website. Yang and David realized that their website had massive
business potential and incorporated Yahoo! as a company on March 2, 1995. After
its incorporation, Sequoia Capital, the most respected and successful
investments firm, agreed to fund Yahoo!
with $2 mn. After realizing that their new company had the high
potential to grow quickly, Yang and David formed a management team by
hiring Tim Koogle, a veteran of Motorola, as chief executive officer and
Jeffrey Mallett, founder of Novell's WordPerfect consumer division,
as chief operating officer. |
