Happy Birthday, Sweet 15

Yahoo! invites its 600 million worldwide users to join the celebration

Not that long ago, Jerry Yang was known as the Stanford grad student who ran a great website about sumo wrestling. He and his lab partner David Filo even named their computers after two Hawaii-born sumo champions: Akebono and Konishiki, respectively. Those PCs were where the duo kept the giant, expanding, categorized, and—in a leap beyond what others were doing—searchable list of useful web links.

Fifteen years ago today, that hobby was incorporated as Yahoo!, supposedly from their self-deprecating backronym, “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.”

The two Stanford students never did complete their PhDs. Instead, they impressed some important investors, hired experienced top executives from other firms, diversified far beyond just search, and began growing their little web directory into what is now one of the best-known companies in the world.

Everything under one roof

Yahoo! expanded faster than the belly of a sumo apprentice. In a revolutionary strategy, the company soon began offering a personalized Internet experience with Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Store, Yahoo! Finance, local weather, news, phone listings, sports scores, music, games, travel and many other customizable features all conveniently gathered together.

The company celebrated its first million-hit day in the fall of 1994, translating to almost 100,000 unique visitors. It received a million unique daily visitors for the first time sometime in 1998. This year, Yahoo! welcomed the almost unimaginable number of 600 million people from around the globe.

Akebono and Konishiki were the world’s heaviest sumo during their wrestling days. Yahoo! is an international heavyweight, too. The recently announced Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance provides a competitive search platform that will drive innovation in search and search advertising, offer a more engaging and personalized experience for consumers, and create greater value for advertisers and publishers. Exciting plans for online video are percolating, as are developments in mobile.

Birthday presents aren’t necessary, since Yahoo! is one of the most profitable pure-Internet companies ever. An even better gift is that, as co-founders and Chief Yahoos Jerry Yang and David Filo say in their open letter today, “We’ve had the unique opportunity to help create an industry and shape the online world, and will continue to focus on the values that brought us here—working hard, having fun, being passionate about your ideas, believing in each other, and always trying to invent the future.”