Yahoo! started as an idea, grew into a hobby and then turned into a full-time passion. Our chief Yahoos, David Filo and Jerry Yang, Ph.D. candidates in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, started their guide in April 1994 as a way to keep track of their personal interests on the Internet. Before long they found their home-brewed lists were becoming too long and unwieldy. Gradually they began to spend more and more time on Yahoo!

During 1994 they converted Yahoo! into a customized database designed to serve the needs of the thousands of users that began to use the service through the closely bound Internet community. They developed customized software to help efficiently locate, identify and edit material stored on the Internet. The name Yahoo! is supposed to stand for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," but Filo and Yang insist they selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos. Yahoo! itself first resided on Yang's student workstation, "akebono," while the search engine was lodged on Filo's computer "konishiki" (both machines were named after legendary Hawaiian sumo wrestlers).

From these humble beginnings, Yahoo! has grown to become the world's favorite guide to the Internet. As more and more of the world goes on-line, Yahoo! is one of the most popular destinations for exploring or researching on the World Wide Web.

In addition to the Yahoo! Internet Guide, we're developing a variety of creative extensions for our diverse audience. Yahoo! offers a branded network of comprehensive information, communication, and shopping services to 80 million users worldwide. As the first online navigational guide to the Web, we are now the leading guide in terms of traffic, advertising, household and business user reach, and are one of the most recognized brands associated with the Internet. The company's global Web network includes 19 World properties in 12 different languages. Our branded properties include things like Yahoo! Travel, Yahoo! Auctions, Yahoo! Calendar and many more. We're just reaching the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the interesting things Yahoo! has to offer. To explore any of our properties, just click on http://www.yahoo.com and pay us a visit. Be sure you have plenty of time to surf, and if you need help learning how to Yahoo, drop in to our helpful guide at http://howto.yahoo.com/

Of course, what's really cool about Yahoo! is where we are headed. With the continuous growth of the Internet and its impact on our daily lives, Yahoo! is in a tremendous position to provide a variety of services and capitalize on the growth of Web-based advertising and commerce. How fast is Yahoo! growing? Well, we are on track to another great year, with our revenues continuing to go up and our employees now numbering over 1200 people worldwide, we are creating more career opportunities every day. You can see that these are thrilling times for us, which makes now a great time for you to join the Yahoo! team!

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