Started by Electrical Engineering students Jerry Yang and David Filo in 1994 at Stanford University, Yahoo! is one of the Internet's largest and most popular portal sites. Originally a searchable directory of Web sites, Yahoo! has expanded to offer world news, free Web-based email, discussion groups, online games, and other services. It once owned GeoCities, a provider of free Web sites. The official website can be visited here.
In 2017, Yahoo!, along with AOL, was acquired by Verizon and placed under Oath Inc. Yahoo! Japan, on the other hand, became a completely separate entity from Yahoo! themselves in 2018, after it was sold off to SoftBank.
"Yet Another Highly Organized Trope List":
- The Artifact: Altaba Inc., which is how the original Yahoo! Inc. renamed itself after selling of most of its namesake portal, keeping only Yahoo! Japan (a joint-venture with SoftBank) and a 16.3% stake in Alibaba Group. It also owned a patent company and made investments in a series of other technological companies (most notably Eastman Kodak and Snapchat). It would eventually sell off all its assets (including Yahoo! Japan to SoftBank) and dissolve in October 2019. (It still exists as of January 2021 as a company in liquidation.)
- Baffled by Own Biology: A
memetic question that was posted on Yahoo Answers (on the Men's Health category) inquired, "why do my thing go up? why me" - Can't Catch Up: It used to stand toe-to-toe with its most direct rival, Google, for a good chunk of The '90s. It fell behind and hasn't maintained its glory since.
- Easter Egg: Before the logo change, a voice exclaimed "YAHOO!" when you clicked the exclamation mark in the logo.
- Fun with Acronyms: The name originally stood for Yet Another Highly Organized Oracle.
- Hypothetical Fight Debate: This was a staple question in Yahoo! Answers "Comics & Animation" section, as well as any section involving animals.
- Loophole Abuse: Before Yahoo! Answers went defunct, you stood a good chance of gaining points quickly by voting for your own answer as the best. You got 2 points for the answer, 1 point for the vote, and 10 points when your answer was selected the best, making a total of 13 points for doing almost nothing. Of course, that didn't work if the asker selected a best answer, or if some other answer got more votes. And with the removal of Best Answer voting, this no longer worked at all (as then the asker chose no matter what).
- Later, it was done by asking a question on an alternate account and giving yourself Best Answer. However, this was risky because using multiple accounts for this purpose was against the Community Guidelines. Not that this stopped some people.
- Network Decay: It hasn't been a "Highly Organized Oracle" for some time now.
- Smug Straight Edge: Chances are, if there was a question related to drugs, there would always be someone who didn't do drugs and acted as if they were better than everyone who did.
- A Winner Is You: Given the sheer amount of time, energy and application it took to move up the higher levels in Yahoo! Answers, (geting from Level Five to Level Six involves accumulating 5,000 points) getting there was a distinct anticlimax leaving you with the feeling of "why even bother?" They could have done a little more to reward you...
