the.com/yahoo
the internet's first front door, before google became the whole house.
means a pioneering web portal and search directory that organized the early internet into browsable categories.
from founded 1994 by stanford grad students jerry yang and david filo as jerry and david's guide to the world wide web, later renamed yahoo, backronymed to yet another hierarchically organized oracle, though yang always said they just liked the word's rude, uncouth swagger from gulliver's travels.
rejected googlepassed on buying google for 1 million in 1998
peak valuationhit 125 billion market cap in year 2000
sold for scrapsverizon bought it for 4.8 billion in 2017
for instance
yahoo mail — launched 1997, once the world's largest email service
geocities — yahoo owned it, shut it down in 2009
yahoo answers — ran 2005 to 2021, chaotic wisdom-of-crowds experiment