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Yahoo! co-founders Jerry Yang (C) and David Filo (R)
pose with chief executive Terry Semel in front of the
NASDAQ MarketSite in Times Square in New York after
ringing the opening bell at NASDAQ on March 2, 2005 as
part of ceremonies marking the 10th anniversary of the
web site. (REUTERS/Peter Morgan)
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Yahoo, one of the net's most iconic companies, is celebrating its
10th anniversary this week.
The web portal has undergone remarkable change since it was set up by
Stanford University students David Filo and Jerry Yang in a campus trailer.
The students wanted a way of keeping track of their web-based
interests.
The categories lists they devised soon became popular to hundreds of
people and the two saw business potential in their idea.
Originally dubbed "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" the
firm adopted the moniker
Yahoo because the founders liked the dictionary definition of a yahoo as
a rude, unsophisticated, uncouth
person.
The term was popularised by the 18th Century satirist Jonathan Swift
in his classic novel, Gulliver's Travels.
"We were certainly not sophisticated or civilised," Mr Yang
told reporters ahead of the anniversary, which will be officially
recognised on 2 March.
They did have business brains however, and in April 1995 persuaded
venture capitalists Sequoia Capital, which also invested in Apple
Computer and Cisco Systems, to fund Yahoo to
the tune of $2m (￡1.04m).
A second round of funding followed in the autumn and the company
floated in April 1996 with fewer than 50 employees.
Now the firm employs 7,600 workers and insists its dot-com culture of
"work hard, play hard" still remains.
It is one of just a handful of survivors of the dot-com crash
although it now faces intense rivalry from firms such as Google, MSN and
AOL.
Jerry Yang, who remains the firm's "Chief Yahoo", is proud
of what the company has achieved.
"In just one decade, the internet has changed the way consumers
do just about everything - and it's been a remarkable and wonderful
experience," he said.
Through it all, we wanted to build products that satisfied our users
wants and needs, but it's even more than that - it's to help every one
of us to discover, get more done, share and interact."
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作为最具特色的互联网企业之一，雅虎本周迎来了它的10周岁生日。
从创立至今，这个门户网站经历了巨大变迁。当初，斯坦福大学的两名学生大卫·菲罗和杨致远在校园的一辆拖车里创建了雅虎网的前身。
这两位学子希望找到一种方式来记录他们个人对互联网的兴趣轨迹。
他们设计的网页目录列表很快赢得了很多人的青睐，他们看到了自己的创意中潜在的商机。
他们的公司最初以“杰瑞的互联网网址指南”命名，后来采用了Yahoo这个绰号，因为两位创始人都喜欢字典上对yahoo的定义：不通世故、粗鲁而单纯的人。
18世纪的讽刺作家乔纳森·斯威夫特在他的经典小说《格列弗游记》中曾用过yahoo一词，从此yahoo一词开始风靡起来。
“当时我们确实不老练，也没什么涵养。”杨致远在公司10周年到来之际对记者说，3月2日是雅虎公司成立的正式纪念日。
然而，他们的确具有商业头脑。1995年4月份，他们成功劝说“红杉资金”风险投资公司为雅虎投资200万美元（104万英镑），“红杉”还投资过苹果电脑公司和思科系统公司。
当年秋天，公司获得了第二轮投资。1996年4月公司正式成立，当时只有不到50名员工。
现在，总共拥有7600名员工的雅虎公司仍然坚持其最初的网站文化信条——“努力工作，尽情享受”。
雅虎是在互联网公司大战中仅有的少数幸存者之一，尽管它如今面临着Google、MSN和AOL等公司强有力的竞争。
杨致远至今仍是公司的“雅虎酋长”，他对公司所取得的成就感到骄傲。
他说：“仅仅10年时间，互联网已经改变了网民们处理所有事情的方式，这是一种非凡的美妙体验。”
“自始至终，我们都希望我们的产品能够满足用户的所想所需，但我们并不仅仅局限于此——我们希望能够帮助每一个人去发现，去更多地实践、分享和交流。”
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