Yahoo was conceptualized almost accidentally in 1993 by Jerry Yang and David Filo - who were pursuing their electrical engineering degree from Stanford University - while posting a list of their favorite sites on the web, got officially founded in 1994 and incorporated in the year 1995. Initially named “Jerry’s guide to world wide web”, got later named Yahoo which was an acronym for “Yet another Hierarchal Officious Oracle”. The term “Hierarchal” described how the Yahoo database was arranged, the term “officious” describing the many office workers who would use Yahoo from their work place and “oracle” suggesting a “source of wisdom”. Today Yahoo! Inc. is a multinational internet corporation best known for its web portal, search engine (Yahoo! Search, #2 in search engine market share with 6.8% market share) and for a variety of other services, including Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping, video sharing, fantasy sports and its social media website. With revenue figures of $4.9B for FY’2011, and a market capitalization of $23.8B, Yahoo’s success story comprises many hits and more misses.
After the modest web directory started to attract large influx of visitors on a daily basis, Yang and Filo decided to make business of it by renting advertising space on the Yahoo Directory pages. Capital Investment came in from Sequoia Capital, who proposed to hire a professional CEO to drive the business forward. After a careful evaluation of a half-dozen candidates, Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital chose Timothy Koogle, who brought 15 years of leadership experience in high-tech management. Timothy had to use great influence and persuasion skills to bring everybody on board on his vision for the company, one that would create a world connected via the web. His vision encompassed leveraging the company’s existing strength of the web directory by