WEBVTT - The Story of Yahoo So Far: Part 1 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:02.840 Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. 0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:08.880 It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:17.560 tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Well, hello there, 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:20.079 I almost didn't see you. Welcome to tech stuff. My 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:22.520 name is Chris Polattin. I'm an editor at how stuff 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:25.960 works dot com. Sitting across me, as usual, is senior 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:32.120 writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey, they nice. You're gonna get sued 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:35.040 for that. No, that's just the tune. They can't get me. 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:40.160 I'm untouchable. Okay, all right, well you know, don't take 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:44.320 that as a challenge. Backtracking already. So today we're going 0:00:44.360 --> 0:00:47.479 to talk about a It's interesting. We're gonna talk about 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:50.000 a company that, as Chris was saying before we start 0:00:50.080 --> 0:00:53.720 recording a few months ago, we might call this like 0:00:54.600 --> 0:00:58.280 a eulogy for a company that is on its way 0:00:58.320 --> 0:01:02.840 to to crumbling to pieces. But now there's actually a 0:01:02.880 --> 0:01:07.160 new hope. I'm wearing my Star Wars lego shirt and 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:10.679 I think that's where he got that fight. Um. So, yeah, 0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:12.960 this is something that people have brought up on a 0:01:13.000 --> 0:01:15.960 couple of occasions, and I don't know, we never really 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:17.959 talked about it. I think maybe we haven't talked about 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:20.000 it yet simply because it was kind of sad. Yeah, 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:23.560 it's the story of Yahoo and and what it is, 0:01:23.640 --> 0:01:27.240 how it became what it is, and it's it's rocky, 0:01:27.400 --> 0:01:30.080 rocky past because this is one of those companies where 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:34.240 you know, there was a meteoric rise in this company 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:38.560 and then a decline and then a sharper decline and 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:42.560 then and an era that was marked with lots of 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:47.800 of unpredictable change and uncertainty and now wait what Yeah, 0:01:47.920 --> 0:01:51.720 and then in two thousand twelve, Uh, just as things 0:01:51.720 --> 0:01:56.800 were really looking pretty grim, there's now a little optimism 0:01:56.840 --> 0:01:59.760 at least about the possibility that this company could find 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:04.320 it's it's footing again. And it it helps if we 0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:06.640 actually just start at the very beginning and just kind 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:09.320 of work our way to present day. I think, yeah, yeah, 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:13.919 and uh, like with many of our tech stories, and 0:02:13.960 --> 0:02:18.520 that's been people and companies. Um, there are these parallels, 0:02:18.560 --> 0:02:23.200 these weird uncanny parallels that pop up. So not just parallels, 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:27.040 but relationships as well. Yeah, it's funny because on a 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:29.760 podcast where we were talking about a couple other guys 0:02:30.400 --> 0:02:32.799 in this similar role, We're gonna start this story with 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:37.560 two guys who met at Stanford University in California and 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:40.960 started a major web property. Yeah, but not that one. 0:02:41.400 --> 0:02:45.280 Another one. So one of those is David Filo and 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:48.800 the other was Jerry Young And uh, I really like 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:52.880 the websites original name. Oh, yes it was. It was 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:55.000 what was it, Jerry and David's Guide to the world 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:59.320 Wide Web. Yes, that's a that's pretty pretty snappy. Yeah, well, 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:01.080 they certain they wouldn't have been able to fit it 0:03:01.080 --> 0:03:04.480 in that jingle that you were just so accurately singing. Yeah, 0:03:04.520 --> 0:03:06.799 that would have been very different. I was so off, 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:09.639 I don't think I even hit a single note. Thank 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:13.040 you anyway. So, yes, Young and Violo at the time, 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:17.520 we're both in the PhD program at Stanford University Electrical Engineering. 0:03:17.639 --> 0:03:21.680 That's correct, and uh, and they decided to start a 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:25.240 personal project. They were both interested in the Worldwide Web, 0:03:25.240 --> 0:03:29.560 which was still very very young. Yes, you know, they 0:03:29.639 --> 0:03:34.560 got to remember that the Web, in fact was maybe 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:38.160 what like two years old more or less. There wasn't 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:40.880 much of the web then, because the Web and the 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:43.000 Internet are, of course, are two different things. The Web 0:03:43.080 --> 0:03:45.120 is built on top of the Internet, so the web 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:48.440 is just one way that we access the Internet and 0:03:48.560 --> 0:03:52.240 use the Internet well. So a ninety four there were 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:56.680 some interesting websites that were around, and most of them 0:03:56.720 --> 0:04:01.080 were generated by either research facilities or students who were 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:04.200 really interested in this new platform. There were a few 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:06.760 companies that were kind of dipping their toe in the 0:04:06.800 --> 0:04:09.720 world Wide Web, but very few at this time. This 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:12.480 was the era where companies. If you you walked into 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:16.040 the corporate headquarters of some major company and said, why 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:19.000 don't you start a site on the Worldwide Web, you'll 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:21.800 be one of the first, and they would go, first, 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:24.280 what are you talking about? Second, why would we why 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:26.200 would do that? Yeah? Why will we ever spend the 0:04:26.279 --> 0:04:29.000 time and effort to do that? What would we do there? 0:04:29.560 --> 0:04:33.160 Because you know, internet commerce didn't exist yet on at 0:04:33.240 --> 0:04:36.800 least as far as the Worldwide Web entity. Uh, but 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:39.719 you started to see some stuff like the BBS culture, 0:04:39.880 --> 0:04:43.000 the bulletin board system culture can seep in and and 0:04:43.200 --> 0:04:46.240 usenet culture as well. So this idea of groups of 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:50.960 people who had similar interests forming communities online and building 0:04:50.960 --> 0:04:54.479 websites or at least a web page that represents that 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:58.839 kind of interest, and Young and Filo both found lots 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:01.400 of websites really in interesting, and then they started to 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:05.720 kind of curate this for themselves. Originally it was just 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:07.920 for them, just for the two of them. Really, they 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:11.000 were kind of creating these these categories of websites that 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:15.120 they thought were interesting. And as the web grew, as 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:18.640 more people began to add content to the web, these 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:21.599 categories got larger and larger, so they started to break 0:05:21.640 --> 0:05:26.840 them into subcategories so that they could easily find content 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:30.560 that related to specific interests. And then they realized that 0:05:30.600 --> 0:05:33.039 their friends also thought this was a really useful tool, 0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:37.279 so they began to roll this out as more of 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:42.080 a service. An idea of the web is this potentially 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:47.920 limitless frontier, which means that all the content you could 0:05:47.920 --> 0:05:51.200 ever want could exist there, but finding it is going 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:55.080 to be tough. Yahoo, which is ultimately the name that 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:58.400 they settled on, would be a service that would allow 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:01.960 you to find content it that's relevant to your interests 0:06:02.440 --> 0:06:05.320 and so that you don't have to just you know, 0:06:05.760 --> 0:06:08.560 jump out into the World Wide Web and wander around 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:14.119 aimlessly hoping that you find stuff that's relevant to you. Well, again, 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:17.719 this was you know, the search engines as we know 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:21.480 them now didn't exist at that point, so this was 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:24.480 This was one of those things where it just I 0:06:24.560 --> 0:06:26.840 think it just sort of seemed obvious to them that 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:30.080 it was an opportunity. Um, so they dropped out of school, 0:06:30.600 --> 0:06:33.080 which is important to remember. Don't drop out of your 0:06:33.080 --> 0:06:36.760 PhD program kids, right, So unless unless you're going to 0:06:36.800 --> 0:06:39.279 become a multibillionaire. Well they did, they did take a 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:42.360 two million dollar investment. Well, and and they started thinking. 0:06:42.440 --> 0:06:44.480 They came up with the name Yahoo, which is technically 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:47.400 an acronym, is it? Yes? Do you know what it 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:53.560 stands for? Yet another hierarchical, officious oracle. Interesting that's according 0:06:53.600 --> 0:06:56.440 to the Yahoo website, by the way, because I would 0:06:56.480 --> 0:06:58.719 not have I would not have believed it had I 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:01.600 not seen it on Yahoo itself. Okay, well that's that's 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:05.440 funny because I read that they were really excited about 0:07:05.520 --> 0:07:08.719 its definition. Yes, this is also true. They they I 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:12.040 think the acronym was kind of a retroactive sort of thing. 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:15.160 They liked the word Yahoo in the sense of the 0:07:15.200 --> 0:07:18.440 definition of it being kind of an uncouth or rude 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:22.240 type of person, as in, as in the phrase get 0:07:22.240 --> 0:07:26.240 a load of this Yahoo? Yeah serious? Yeah, well I 0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:33.000 mean these yeah, these are these guys were sort of informal, Well, 0:07:33.040 --> 0:07:34.560 I mean it was the birth of the web, was 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:37.400 the birth of the web culture. And you know, those 0:07:37.440 --> 0:07:40.280 early days of the web people often were these guys. 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:43.160 They often equate the early days they being people in 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:48.000 general so vague. Some people referred to those early days 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:50.640 of the webs like the the the digital equivalent of 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:53.480 the wild West, like anything goes and no rules were 0:07:53.560 --> 0:07:56.680 defined yet, so anything was it was possible. Well, if 0:07:56.720 --> 0:08:00.720 I'm not mistaken, weren't weren't there titles the chief? Yeah, yes, 0:08:01.040 --> 0:08:04.640 and uh. And in ninety four they also before they 0:08:04.680 --> 0:08:08.360 before the company had really become a company, it existed 0:08:08.440 --> 0:08:13.480 essentially on their own personal machines. Young had his His 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:20.320 was named Akabono and Filos was called Konnashiki, and both 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:23.400 of these were named after sumo wrestlers. Of course, none 0:08:23.440 --> 0:08:26.360 of that is a joke, that is all true. This 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:31.240 is again informing you behind of the the personalities behind 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:36.000 Yahoo and what sort of of thing. Yahoo started off 0:08:36.080 --> 0:08:39.319 as being versus what it would become, because it had 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:42.920 a very interesting evolution. It started off as this very 0:08:43.040 --> 0:08:48.120 quirky approach to curating information that's on the web, and 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:52.600 I think that had a lot of appeal among people 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:56.080 of around around the same age as young and flo 0:08:56.360 --> 0:08:59.800 and younger really the which age of people that we 0:08:59.840 --> 0:09:03.200 think of as being really Internet savvy and passionate about 0:09:03.200 --> 0:09:06.480 the Internet at the time. Back in the early nineties. 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:13.440 Um so they start pushing Yahoo and by the fall 0:09:13.480 --> 0:09:16.600 of ninety four, this is not even a full year, right, 0:09:16.720 --> 0:09:20.680 they started in ninety four. By the fall of ninety four, 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:25.640 Yahoo had had the word of Yahoo had spread beyond Stanford, 0:09:26.240 --> 0:09:30.400 and it had become something of a go to site 0:09:30.440 --> 0:09:32.520 for lots of people. And in the fall of ninety 0:09:32.520 --> 0:09:38.320 four they had their first million hit day. So yeah, 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:40.720 less than a year old, in the early days of 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:43.000 the web when most people don't even know what the 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:47.040 web is, it had its first day to hit over 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:51.640 a million hits. Uh. That actually boils down to about 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:54.800 a hundred thousand unique visitors. So that meant that people 0:09:54.800 --> 0:09:57.720 would go to Yahoo multiple times in a day. So 0:09:58.360 --> 0:10:02.400 you know, a unique visitor is one person, that's that's who, 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:05.600 that's a unique visitor, right, But a unique visitor can 0:10:05.640 --> 0:10:10.280 generate multiple hits by visiting the page several times. Uh. 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:13.120 So that's the difference between those two. So a hundred 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:16.720 thousand people, essentially generating a million hits on Yahoo within 0:10:17.280 --> 0:10:21.360 the first year of it being a thing. And in 0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:27.760 in March, Uh, yeah, who made the step of incorporation 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:31.480 so it became an official company. That's when Young and 0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:37.360 Filo decided to uh skidaddle from the world of academy. 0:10:38.640 --> 0:10:43.160 And they also hired someone to be the CEO. Yes, 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:46.679 because Young and Filo we're not business guys. These guys 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:51.200 were electrical engineer students. So they they said, you know, 0:10:51.280 --> 0:10:53.760 we need to get someone who knows the business side 0:10:54.240 --> 0:10:57.880 of running a corporation. We can handle technical stuff like crazy, 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:01.079 but you know, when it comes down to actually business decisions, 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:03.560 we should get someone who really knows what they're doing. 0:11:03.559 --> 0:11:07.400 And so they hired a guy named Tim Coogle. And 0:11:07.600 --> 0:11:11.120 uh he was someone who came from Motorola. He had 0:11:11.120 --> 0:11:15.079 worked at Motorole. He was also a graduate of Stanford. 0:11:16.040 --> 0:11:17.760 That will not be the last time we've heard the 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:20.760 name of that academic institution before the end of this podcast. 0:11:21.360 --> 0:11:24.160 And uh and, like Chris said, they did also secure 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:29.240 two million dollars in funding from Sequoia Capital, which, um 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:33.000 seems small by today's standards, but you know that was 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:35.480 it was a new thing, and the web was a 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:39.280 young entity, and uh it was enough to get them going. 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:41.520 They actually got a second round of funding in the 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:45.160 fall of m and also they hired a guy named 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:48.920 Jeffrey Mallett to be the chief operating officer. And Mallett 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:53.160 came from Novelle. He was actually out of their consumer 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:57.760 division for a little product called word Perfect. I feel 0:11:57.800 --> 0:12:01.520 like I've heard of that somewhere, man, Okay, short tangent, 0:12:01.960 --> 0:12:05.960 just a short tangent people. Word Perfect is to this 0:12:06.080 --> 0:12:10.960 day my favorite word processing program I've ever used. Specifically, 0:12:11.960 --> 0:12:14.880 weren't well, We're Perfect five point one was great. We're 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:17.240 Perfect four point two is what I cut my teeth on. 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:21.240 As far as word processing goes. It's sad to say 0:12:21.280 --> 0:12:26.040 that I still can remember the the keyboard shortcuts to 0:12:26.120 --> 0:12:30.440 do things like bold and underline spell check, and I 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:33.160 have to stop myself from doing them whenever I'm using 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:35.600 word although I guess technically I think there is a 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:38.800 way I can set it so that those old key 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:42.800 strokes are the same. You know, you can actually do 0:12:42.960 --> 0:12:46.199 that with some versions of words. Anyway, I don't dare 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:50.880 do that for fear of becoming too dependent upon it. Anyway, 0:12:51.120 --> 0:12:56.320 tangent over. So yeah, that that following they get their 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:58.480 second round of funding, things are looking pretty good for 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:02.320 this young startup. I mean again, it's starting nine looking 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:04.880 up UH and in ninety six. I mean, this is 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:07.520 lightning fast really when you compare it to some of 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:10.960 the other UH tech companies that are out there, like 0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:16.400 let's say Facebook, for example, April, they launched their I 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:21.400 p O initial public offering. At that time, they had 0:13:22.000 --> 0:13:26.960 forty nine employees and when they launched the I p O, 0:13:27.080 --> 0:13:31.640 the stock price was valued at thirteen dollars a share. Now, 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:38.319 Yahoo stock has had probably one of the most dramatic 0:13:39.240 --> 0:13:43.000 histories I've seen for a company that managed to survive 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:50.800 some massive, massive problems. So remember this company launches well 0:13:50.880 --> 0:13:53.920 before the dot com bubble burst, because that that happened 0:13:53.920 --> 0:13:57.480 in two thousand one. Well, I would say that Yahoo's 0:13:57.760 --> 0:14:02.880 meteoric rise probably was part of what built the the 0:14:02.920 --> 0:14:05.720 tech bubble in the first place. It definitely helps itself. 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:09.520 It definitely helped precipitate the bubble bursting because the valuation 0:14:09.559 --> 0:14:14.400 of Yahoo got out of hand. At its highest from 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:18.680 what I can tell, on January third, two thousand, stock 0:14:18.840 --> 0:14:21.600 was valued Remember it launched at thirteen dollars a share. 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:24.480 On January third, two thousand, it was valued at a 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:30.600 hundred eighteen dollars seventy five cents a share. Yeah, and 0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:33.120 keep in mind also that yah Yahoo stock, I think 0:14:33.160 --> 0:14:38.680 a split five times, so that also is something to 0:14:38.760 --> 0:14:42.120 keep in mind. But then the lowest it was valued 0:14:43.920 --> 0:14:46.720 came just a year later in two thousand one. So 0:14:46.800 --> 0:14:50.000 in two thousand at its highest one dollars seventy five 0:14:50.040 --> 0:14:53.480 cents a share, at it's lowest four dollars five cents 0:14:54.160 --> 0:14:57.440 in two thousand one. That's obviously after the bubble burst, 0:14:57.680 --> 0:15:00.400 the dot com bubble burst, and this company that was 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:06.120 worth a huge amount of money saw that value escape 0:15:06.720 --> 0:15:10.400 in just a few months time. Uh. Currently, as of 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:13.760 the recording of this podcast, which is in mid August, 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:20.400 it's valued at fourteen dollars cents per share, so over 0:15:20.480 --> 0:15:23.760 what its initial public offering was, but nowhere close to 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:28.280 its peak post splits post splits. Yeah, you have to 0:15:28.280 --> 0:15:31.280 figure that into but a hundred dollars less than at 0:15:31.320 --> 0:15:34.920 its peak is a big deal. But they were definitely 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:38.280 Jerry and David were definitely onto something because within two 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:42.280 years of their you know, being engineering students, all of 0:15:42.320 --> 0:15:45.760 a sudden, they were multimillionaires, which is pretty cool. Yeah, 0:15:45.840 --> 0:15:49.040 you gotta you know, getting back to the mid nineties 0:15:49.560 --> 0:15:52.440 when this I p O goes out, Yeah, they were 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:56.720 they were definitely riding high. I mean, their their company 0:15:56.880 --> 0:16:00.240 was a success, and they continued to build on it. 0:16:00.320 --> 0:16:03.200 They weren't you know, just curating content. They started to 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:07.560 add more services. Um, they created the Yahoo dot com 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:11.960 personalized home page approach, the my Yahoo Yeah approach. So 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:14.440 they sort of became one of the earliest portals because 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:17.160 you'd get your news and your weather where you were 0:16:17.360 --> 0:16:20.440 very good. Yeah, a portal being like, you know, your 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:23.640 your snapshot view of what is going on on the 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:26.640 web and in the world on any given day, so 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:29.640 go ahead, portal, you know, like a door. So it 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:32.640 was your door to the internet. Yeah, and this is 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:35.560 very similar to what companies had been doing for a 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:38.320 while the uh you know, we talked about it in 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:41.440 our other podcasts, things like A O L when A 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:43.960 O L was doing so you would get your connection 0:16:44.040 --> 0:16:46.360 to the internet through a O L and a O 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:49.160 L would create this portal that was kind of again 0:16:49.200 --> 0:16:52.160 a snapshot, as a O L saw it, of what 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:54.280 was going on in the Web and in the world, 0:16:54.680 --> 0:16:58.280 and that was your initial introduction to the Internet on 0:16:58.280 --> 0:17:00.960 any given day, and then you could explore on your 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:03.440 own as much as you liked. But this was sort 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:05.560 of a starting point. Well, that's the same thing Yahoo 0:17:05.600 --> 0:17:08.760 was doing, and it was seeing a lot of early 0:17:08.840 --> 0:17:11.760 success with that. Yeah, the biggest the biggest difference here 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:14.760 was that a O L was still proprietary in its 0:17:14.760 --> 0:17:17.600 own network and not hooked up to the Internet, while 0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:20.919 Yahoo was on the Internet itself. Yeah, it was. It 0:17:20.960 --> 0:17:24.560 was browser based as opposed to computer based. Yes. And 0:17:24.600 --> 0:17:29.159 then also they started to introduce something that would become 0:17:30.520 --> 0:17:33.879 incredibly influential on the web, one of the most uh 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:38.040 influential acts ever, I would say, which is that they 0:17:38.359 --> 0:17:42.720 really were pioneers with web advertising. They became a platform 0:17:42.800 --> 0:17:47.120 for web ads, and this is kind of the foundation 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:52.760 for the way many companies make money using the web. 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:55.399 And there there there are several different ways to generate 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:57.919 revenue on the Web, and some of it is involving 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:00.600 like commerce, you know, essentially using the as sort of 0:18:00.640 --> 0:18:04.240 a catalog, the way you could argue Amazon does. Amazon 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:06.720 also offers a lot of services that you can subscribe 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:11.000 to either as a customer or as a corporate customer. Uh, 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:13.680 they generate revenue that way as well, so they it's 0:18:13.760 --> 0:18:19.480 not just through being sort of a retail or catalog 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:23.119 kind of approach. But web advertising is is a major 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:26.320 way that companies make money on the Internet. And Yahoo 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:29.720 was again the really the pioneer in those early days 0:18:30.520 --> 0:18:35.560 of defining what web advertising is. In fact, y'all who 0:18:35.680 --> 0:18:40.720 would even eventually do studies that would help show a 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:45.719 connection between web advertising and real world effects, so in 0:18:45.720 --> 0:18:50.080 other words, showing that web advertising can have an effect 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:56.640 in guiding someone's consumer choices. Well, they were very effective 0:18:56.640 --> 0:18:59.920 at creating content that would get people to the website. 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:02.919 And it makes sense that, you know, you would be 0:19:02.960 --> 0:19:05.360 able to go up to a company who might want 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:07.399 to advertise and say, look, I I know for a 0:19:07.440 --> 0:19:10.879 fact I'm going to have people on this page because 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:13.880 I get fifty people to visit this page every day, 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:17.040 and now you can advertise if you want to pay 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:23.440 you one access to at max then uh yeah, and 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:26.200 and and that was a powerful story to say, look, 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:29.040 we have the we can tell you how many people 0:19:29.320 --> 0:19:33.159 looked at this, and if your ad is on this page, 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:35.919 people will see it, whereas if you put an ad 0:19:35.920 --> 0:19:38.640 in a magazine or on a billboard. You don't know 0:19:38.680 --> 0:19:42.040 if people, if their eyes ever even glanced across it, 0:19:42.080 --> 0:19:44.159 but we could tell you if they saw it or not, 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:47.400 because we know if they came to the page. It's 0:19:47.400 --> 0:19:50.920 a pretty powerful story. Not everyone bought into it immediately, No, 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:54.240 it actually took some time to really get traction. But 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:58.800 once once, there were some early success stories. That was 0:19:59.320 --> 0:20:01.520 that the right was on the wall, that web advertising 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:04.080 was going to be the future for generating revenue on 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:09.320 the web. Well, within three years, the total market value 0:20:09.320 --> 0:20:12.120 of the company was more than a hundred billion dollars, 0:20:12.440 --> 0:20:16.359 So it made some waves. So so one year before 0:20:16.400 --> 0:20:20.200 that they went ahead and established Internet guides in Chinese 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:23.399 and in Spanish. So it becomes a global entity. And 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:26.240 in fact, we're going to have some interesting discussion about 0:20:26.320 --> 0:20:29.760 China and a little bit uh. In ninety nine, like 0:20:29.760 --> 0:20:31.960 like Chris was saying, the valuation of the company was 0:20:32.000 --> 0:20:34.119 over a hundred billion. That was also the year that 0:20:34.200 --> 0:20:38.679 Yahoo made two major acquisitions. I think we both of 0:20:38.720 --> 0:20:42.440 these were in our podcast about some of the bad 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:46.520 deals that have happened. One of them was Geo Cities, 0:20:46.680 --> 0:20:49.600 which seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, because 0:20:49.640 --> 0:20:51.720 that's where a lot of people had built home pages, 0:20:52.840 --> 0:20:55.400 and that was kind of the early days of when 0:20:55.400 --> 0:20:57.879 people would create a digital presence on the web. This 0:20:57.960 --> 0:21:01.240 is before blogging, it's before and anything like tumbler or 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:04.919 social networks. So at the time, that was kind of 0:21:04.960 --> 0:21:07.359 how people thought, Oh, well, if I want to create 0:21:07.480 --> 0:21:10.560 something that's about me, I have to have a website. 0:21:11.040 --> 0:21:14.480 Nowadays that's not the case. People use other platforms and 0:21:14.520 --> 0:21:17.399 then they you know, talk about themselves at length. That way, 0:21:17.560 --> 0:21:19.840 if you want to hear about me, follow me at 0:21:19.920 --> 0:21:23.640 John Strickland Twitter. There you go, um, because I'll talk 0:21:23.640 --> 0:21:28.720 about myself all day long. They also bought another company, 0:21:28.800 --> 0:21:31.080 and this was probably I think this was this topped 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:37.840 our list of bad deals, which was Broadcast dot Com. Now, 0:21:38.640 --> 0:21:43.639 Yahoo has a history of looking at ways of marrying 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:47.880 other form of media with the web or getting into 0:21:48.040 --> 0:21:53.600 businesses that are beyond just curating content for the web 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:57.720 or even generating content, and that included Broadcast dot Com. 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:02.160 H Now, this acquisition did do something, uh, it made 0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:06.199 Mark Cuban a billionaire. Say it affected the sports the 0:22:06.200 --> 0:22:09.120 sports world substantially because it gave Mark Cuban enough money 0:22:09.160 --> 0:22:12.199 to buy teams and give himself fine for it. It 0:22:12.240 --> 0:22:15.680 gave money to a real Maverick and then a lot 0:22:15.720 --> 0:22:21.240 of other matricks to um yeah, the the but but Broadcast, 0:22:21.240 --> 0:22:24.600 you know y'all, who ultimately was not really able to 0:22:24.640 --> 0:22:28.600 do much with broadcast. It did absorb some of the 0:22:28.640 --> 0:22:32.639 technology that broadcasts had developed into other parts of Yahoo, 0:22:33.520 --> 0:22:37.320 but broadcast dot Com itself and the identity it had 0:22:37.400 --> 0:22:41.840 created ceased to be before much longer and it A 0:22:41.840 --> 0:22:45.560 lot of people cite the Yahoo Broadcast deal as one 0:22:45.600 --> 0:22:50.639 of the most short sighted, unwise deals, especially when you 0:22:50.720 --> 0:22:55.879 look at how many users were uh subscribed essentially to 0:22:55.920 --> 0:22:59.159 broadcast dot Com, because it was one of those deals 0:22:59.200 --> 0:23:02.760 where the amount of money paid per user was astronomical, 0:23:03.560 --> 0:23:05.320 like it would have been cheaper to just go to 0:23:05.440 --> 0:23:08.240 every single person who had ever visited broadcast dot com 0:23:08.240 --> 0:23:10.720 and give him a check for a thousand dollars. That 0:23:10.760 --> 0:23:13.720 would have been less expensive than buying broadcast for what 0:23:13.840 --> 0:23:17.200 they did U. So yeah, that ninety nine definitely had 0:23:17.280 --> 0:23:21.160 a couple of questionable acquisitions in it, although again, really 0:23:21.240 --> 0:23:23.720 we have the benefit of hindsight at the time there 0:23:23.800 --> 0:23:28.040 was it don't seem quite so silly. Yeah. Again, this 0:23:28.119 --> 0:23:30.720 is when the bubble still inflating, right, The bubble was 0:23:30.760 --> 0:23:33.280 not burst yet. People just thought that the web was 0:23:33.440 --> 0:23:36.840 limitless as far as not just not just for content, 0:23:37.359 --> 0:23:41.199 but for the possibility of making money, and that you know, 0:23:41.320 --> 0:23:43.600 no one really knew where the web was going, but 0:23:43.680 --> 0:23:47.880 everyone was really excited. So in hindsight we could say like, whoops, 0:23:47.960 --> 0:23:51.600 bad idea, but at the time no way of knowing. Well, yeah, 0:23:51.600 --> 0:23:56.639 who actually sort of gave rise to another similar but 0:23:56.760 --> 0:23:59.879 not exactly the same type of website. Wow. Yeah, so 0:24:00.000 --> 0:24:02.399 you're talking about something a meeting that happened in two thousand, 0:24:02.400 --> 0:24:04.480 aren't you. Well, yes, but I was kind of going 0:24:04.520 --> 0:24:10.160 to preface that meeting by saying, um, people would visit 0:24:10.240 --> 0:24:13.760 Yahoo to find other websites. As a matter of fact, 0:24:13.800 --> 0:24:17.480 for a while, they had a print magazine Yahoo Internet Life. 0:24:17.520 --> 0:24:19.560 I remember it. You used to be able to see 0:24:19.560 --> 0:24:23.000 it on the news stand. Um. You know, my as 0:24:23.000 --> 0:24:27.400 my father got into, uh getting online. He was a subscriber, 0:24:27.440 --> 0:24:31.320 so he could find websites, um and uh, and that 0:24:31.400 --> 0:24:33.520 was that was kind of interesting. One of the nice 0:24:33.560 --> 0:24:36.359