Google & yahoo

Dari Wikipedia bahasa Indonesia, ensiklopedia bebas
Langsung ke: navigasi, cari
Google Inc.
Jenis Publik (NASDAQ: GOOG), (LSE: GGEA)
Industri Internet, Perangkat lunak komputer
Didirikan Flag of California.svgMenlo Park, California (7 September 1998[1])
Kantor pusat Mountain View, California, Amerika Serikat
Tokoh penting Eric E. Schmidt, CEO/Direktur
Sergey Brin, Pendiri, Presiden Teknologi
Larry E. Page, Pendiri, Presiden Produk
George Reyes, CFO
Produk Lihat daftar produk Google
Pendapatan Green Arrow Up.svg 16,593 milyar USD (2007)[2]
Laba bersih Green Arrow Up.svg 4,203 milyar USD (2007)[2]
Karyawan 19.604 (30 Juni 2008)[3]
Situs web www.google.com
Tampilan Google pada tahun 1998.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG dan LSE: GGEA) merupakan sebuah perusahaan publik Amerika Serikat, berperan dalam pencarian Internet dan iklan online. Perusahaan ini berbasis di Mountain View, California, dan memiliki karyawan berjumlah 19.604 orang (30 Juni 2008)[3][4] Filosofi Google meliputi slogan seperti "Don't be evil", dan "Kerja harusnya menatang dan tantangan itu harusnya menyenangkan", menggambarkan budaya perusahaan yang santai.

Google didirikan oleh Larry Page dan Sergey Brin ketika mereka masih mahasiswa di Universitas Stanford dan perusahaan ini merupakan perusahaan saham pribadi pada 7 September 1998. Penawaran umum perdananya dimulai pada tanggal 19 Agustus 2004, mengumpulkan dana $1,67 milyar, menjadikannya bernilai $23 milyar. Melalui berbagai jenis pengembangan produk baru, pengambil alihan dan mitra, perusahaan ini telah memperluas bisnis pencarian dan iklan awalnya hingga ke area lainnya, termasuk email berbasis web, pemetaan online, produktivitas perusahaan, dan bertukar video.

Produk
!Artikel utama untuk bagian ini adalah: Daftar produk Google
Antarmuka Gmail, layanan surat elektronik Google, dalam bahasa Indonesia.

Google telah membuat layanan dan peralatan untuk lingkungan bisnis dan masyarakat; termasuk aplikasi web, jaringan periklanan dan solusi bagi bisnis.
[sunting] Periklanan

Kebanyakan dari pendapatan Google berasal dari program periklanan. Untuk keuangan tahun 2006, perusahaan ini dilaporkan mendapat jumlah keuntungan periklanan sebesar $10,492 milyar dan hanya $112 juta pada pendapatan lisensi dan lainnya.[5] Google AdWords membolehkan pengiklan web menampilkan iklannya dalam hasil pencarian Google dan Google Content Network, melalui sebuah sistem bayar-per-klik atau bayar-per-lihat. Pemilik website Google AdSense juga dapat menampilkan iklannya di situs mereka sendiri, dan mendapat untung setiap kali iklan diklik.
[sunting] Aplikasi

Google dikenal luas karena layanan pencarian webnya, yang mana merupakan sebuah faktor besar dari kesuksesan perusahaan ini. Pada Agustus 2007, Google merupakan mesin pencari di web yang paling sering digunakan dengan saham pasaran sebanyak 53,6%, kemudian Yahoo! (19,9%) dan Live Search (12,9%).[6] Google memiliki milyaran halaman web, sehingga pengguna dapat mencari informasi yang mereka inginkan, melalui penggunaan kata kunci dan operator. Google juga telah menggunakan teknologi Pencarian Web pada layanan pencarian lainnya, termasuk, Pencarian Gambar, Google News, situs perbandingan harga Google Product Search, arsip Usenet interaktif Google Groups, Google Maps dan lainnya.

Tahun 2004, Google meluncurkan layanan email berbasis web gratisnya, disebut sebagai Gmail.[7] Gmail memiliki fitur teknologi penyaringan spam dan kemampuan untuk menggunakan teknologi Google untuk mencari email. Layanan ini mendatangkan keuntungan dengan menampilkan iklan dari layanan AdWords yang dimasukkan dalam isi pesan email yang ditampilkan di layar.

Pada awal 2006, perusahaan ini meluncurkan Google Video, yang tidak hanya membolehkan pengguna untuk mencari dan melihat video secara gratis, tetapi juga membolehkan pengguna dan penyebar media menyebarkan isinya, termasuk acara-acara televisi CBS, pertandingan basket NBA, dan video musik.[8] Bulan Agustus 2007, Google mengumumkan bahwa mereka akan menghentikan program penyewaan dan penjualan videonya dan menawarkan pengembalian uang dan kredit Google Checkout bagi pengguna yang telah membeli video untuk sendiri.

Google juga telah membuat beberapa aplikasi desktop, termasuk Google Earth, sebuah program pemetaan interaktif yang disediakan oleh satelit dan fotografi udara yang mencakup keseluruhan planet Bumi. Google Earth dianggap sangat akurat dan lebih mendetil. Beberapa kota besar memiliki gambar jelas yang dapat dibesarkan sedekat-dekatnya untuk melihat kendaraan dan pejalan kaki dengan jelas. Akibatnya, terdapat beberapa alasan mengenai keterlibatan dalam keamanan nasional. Secara spesifik, beberapa negara dan militer beranggapan perangkat lunak ini dapat digunakan untuk melihat dengan kejelasan dekat-jelas lokasi fisik infrastruktur yang rusak, bangunan komersial dan penghunian, pangkalan, agensi pemerintah, dan lainnya. Bagaimanapun, gambar satelit jarang diperbarui, dan semuanya tersedia gratis melalui produk lainnya dan bahkan sumber pemerintah (NASA dan National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, sebagai contoh). Beberapa orang menilai argumen ini dengan menyatakan bahwa Google Earth mudah diakses juga saat mencari lokasi.

Beberapa produk lainnya tersedia melalui Google Labs, yang mana merupakan sebuah koleksi aplikasi yang belum selesai dan masih dalam tahap ujicoba agar dapat digunakan publik.

Google telah mempromosikan produk mereka dalam berbagai cara. Di London, Google Space didirikan di Bandar Udara Heathrow, menampilkan berbagai produk, termasuk Gmail, Google Earth dan Picasa.[9][10] Juga, sebuah halaman yang sama diluncurkan untuk mahasiswa Amerika, dibawah nama College Life, Powered by Google.[11]

Tahun 2007, beberapa laporan menyatakan bahwa Google merencanakan peluncuran telepon genggam milik mereka, kemungkinan sebuah pesaing bagi iPhone Apple.[12][13][14] Pada 5 November 2007, Google akhirnya mengumumkan Android, sebuah platform perangkat lunak dan sistem operasi bagi perangkat bergerak yang didukung Open Handset Alliance, sebuah konsorsium yang terdiri dari 34 perusahaan perangkat lunak, perangkat keras, dan telekomunikasi yang bertujuan mengembangkan standar terbuka bagi perangkat bergerak. Pada bulan September 2008, T-Mobile merilis ponsel pertama yang berjalan pada platform Android, yakni G1.

Bulan Oktober 2007, layanan Google SMS diluncurkan di India dan membolehkan pengguna memperoleh daftar bisnis, jadwal pemutaran film dan informasi dengan mengirim pesan singkat.[15]

Google juga meluncurkan Google Chrome yaitu sebuah browser. Browser ini cukup cepat dan tampilannya minimalis
[sunting] Produk turunan

Tahun 2007, Google meluncurkan Google Apps Premier Edition, sebuah versi lain Google Apps yang difokuskan terutama pada pengguna bisnis. Produk ini memiliki beberapa tambahan seperti ruang disk lebih banyak untuk e-mail, akses API, dan penyokong utama, dengan harga USD50 per pengguna per tahun. Sebuah pertemuan besar Google Apps dengan 38.000 pengguna dilaksanakan di Universitas Lakehead di Thunder Bay, Ontario, Kanada.[16]

Pada 13 Desember 2007, Google mengumumkan peluncuran terbatas Knol, sebuah situs web yang ditujukan sebagai sumber referensi pengetahuan. Knol dibuka bebas kepada semua pengguna pada 23 Juli 2008.
[sunting] Platform
!Artikel utama untuk bagian ini adalah: Platform Google

Layanan Google berjalan pada beberapa ladang server, setiap ladang berisi ribuan komputer komoditas bertarif rendah yang menjalankan versi Linux. Sementara perusahaan ini tidak menyediakan informasi mendetil mengenai perangkat kerasnya, sebuah perhitungan tahun 2006 menyatakan bahwa terdapat 450.000 server, dikelompokkan dan diletakkan di pusat data di seluruh dunia.[17]
[sunting] Kebiasaan dan budaya perusahaan

Google dikenal dengan etos kerjanya yang santai, yang mengingatkan kepada musim Dot-com. Bulan Januari 2007, budaya Google tersebut dipelajari oleh Fortune Magazine dan menempati urutan #1 (dari 100) perusahaan terbaik untuk bekerja.[18] Filosofi perusahaan ini didasarkan pada berbagai prinsip biasa seperti, "Anda dapat menghasilkan uang tanpa melakukan vandal", "Anda dapat bekerja serius tanpa mengenakan seragam," dan "Bekerja harusnya menantang dan tantangan itu harusnya menyenangkan." Sebuah daftar lengkap fundamental perusahaan tersedia di website-nya.[19] Budaya bekerja santai Google dapat dilihat dari logo Google-nya yang bervariasi pada hari-hari penting.

Google telah dikritik karena melakukan penggajian di bawah standar industri[20]. Contohnya, beberapa administrator sistem digaji kurang dari $35.000 per tahun – dianggap kurang untuk pasaran kerja Bay Area.[21] Bagaimanapun, performa saham Google setelah IPO telah membolehkan banyak karyawan awal diberi ganti rugi dengan berpartisipasi dalam pertumbuhan kekayaan perusahaan.[22] Google mengimplementasikan insentif karyawan lainnya tahun 2005, seperti Google Founders' Award, dengan tambahan untuk memberikan gaji besar kepada karyawan baru. Kenyamanan, budaya, popularitas global, dan penghargaan terhadap merek kuatnya juga telah menarik banyak pelamar kerja yang berpotensi.

Setelah IPO pada Agustus 2004, dilaporkan bahwa pendiri Sergey Brin dan Larry Page, dan CEO Eric Schmidt, meminta bahwa gaji mereka dipotong menjadi $1.[23] Penawaran yang akan datang oleh perusahaan untuk meningkatkan gaji mereka telah dibatalkan, terutama karena, "ganti rugi utama mereka akan datang dari pengembalian kepemilikan saham di Google. Sebagai pemegang saham signifikan, kekayaan masing-masing dikaitkan secara langsung untuk menyeimbangkan performa dan apresiasi harga saham, yang menyediakan persilangan langsung dengan ketertarikan pemegang saham."[23] Tahun 2004, Schmidt digaji $250.000 per tahun, dan Page dan Brin masing-masing digasji $150.000.[23]

Mereka semua telah menolak penawaran bonus dan peningkatan ganti rugi oleh dewan direktur Google. Pada laporan orang terkaya Amerika Serikat tahun 2007, Forbes melaporkan bahwa Sergey Brin dan Larry Page menempati urutan #5 dengan kekayaan $18,5 milyar masing-masing.[24]
[sunting] Googleplex
Googleplex
!Artikel utama untuk bagian ini adalah: Googleplex

Sambil bermain-main dengan nama Google, kantornya, di Mountain View, California, diberi nama "Googleplex" — sebuah googolplex yaitu 1 diikuti seratus nol, dan kantor tersebut menjadi sebuah komplek bangunan (semacam multiplex, cineplex, dll). Lobinya didekorasi dengan piano, lampu lava, kumpulan server lama, dan proyeksi tanda tanya di dinding. Lorongnya penuh dengan bola dan sepeda latihan. Setiap karyawan memiliki akses menuju pusat hiburan kantor. Kebutuhan yang disediakan tersebar di seluruh kampus dan termasuk sebuah gimnasium dengan alat-alat olahraga, ruang loker, kamar mandi, ruang pijat, permainan video, Foosball, anak piano besar, meja bilyar, dan ping pong. Dengan tambahan menuju ruang rekreasi, terdapat ruang makan terisi berbagai sereal, permen beruang, gula-gula, permen hitam, kacang mede, yogurt, wortel, buah-buahan segar, dan lusinan minuman seperti jus segar, soda, dan cappuccino buatan sendiri.[rujukan?]
Papan letak di Googleplex

Tahun 2006, Google berpindah ke perkantoran seluas 28.900 m² di New York City, tepatnya 111 Eighth Ave. di Manhattan.[25] Kantor tersebut dirancang dan dibangun khusus untuk Google dan merumahkan tim penjualan iklan terbesarnya yang telah berperan dalam menjaga kerjasama besar, terutama dengan MySpace dan AOL.[25] Tahun 2003, mereka menambah seorang petugas pengembangan di New York City, yang telah bertanggung jawab untuk lebih dari 100 proyek pengembangan, termasuk Google Maps, Google Spreadsheet, dan lainnya.[25] Diperkirakan bahwa bangunan tersebut menguras biaya $10 juta per tahun untuk sewa dan bentuk juga fungsinya sama dengan kantor di Mountain View, termasuk Foosball, hoki udara, dan meja ping-pong, juga area permainan video.[25] Pada tahun 2006, Google juga meresmikan kantor baru untuk divisi AdWords-nya di Ann Arbor, Michigan.[26]

Ukuran sistem pencarian Google belum diketahui; perkiraan jumlah server perusahaan adalah 450.000, yang tersebar di 25 lokasi di seluruh dunia, termasuk pusat operasi besar di Irlandia dan Atlanta, Georgia. Google juga sedang dalam proses pembangunan pusat operasi besar di The Dalles, Oregon, di tepi Sungai Columbia. Situs tersebut, disebut media sebagai Project 02, dipilih karena ketersediaan tenaga hidroelektrik dan stok kabel fiber optik besar, yang ditinggalkan sejak musim dot com pada tahun 1990-an. Pusat komputasi ini diperkirakan seluas dua lapangan sepak bola, dan telah menghasilkan ratusan lapangan kerja konstruksi, mengakibatkan harga real estat lokal meningkat 40%. Setelah selesai, bangunan ini akan menghasilkan 60 hingga 200 lapangan kerja permanen di kota berpenduduk 12.000 orang itu.[27]

Google juga membuat langkah untuk menjamin operasi mereka ramah lingkungan. Bulan Oktober 2006, perusahaan ini mengumumkan rencana untuk memasang ribuan panel solar untuk menyediakan 1,6 megawatt listrik, cukup untuk memenuhi 30% kebutuhan energi kampus.[28] Sistem ini akan menjadi sistem tenaga solar terbesar di kampus perusahaan AS dan salah satu yang terbesar di dunia. Bulan Juni 2007, Google mengumumkan bahwa mereka berencana untuk berstatus bebas karbon pada 2008, yang mencakup berinvestasi pada efisiensi energi, sumber energi yang diperbarui, dan tidak menggunakan karbon, seperti berinvestasi di proyek seperti mengumpulkan dan membakar metana dari kotoran hewan di pertanian-pertanian Meksiko dan Brazil.[29]
[sunting] "Dua puluh persen" waktu

Semua pengembang Google menyisakan 20% waktu kerja mereka (sehari per minggu) pada proyek yang menarik mereka. Beberapa layanan baru Google, seperti Gmail, Google News, Orkut, dan AdSense berasal dari para pengembang independen ini.[30] Dalam pembicaraan di Universitas Stanford, Marissa Mayer, Wakil Presiden Google untuk Produk Pencarian dan Kepuasan Pengguna, menyatakan bahwa analisisnya menunjukkan bahwa setengah dari produk baru yang diluncurkan berasal dari 20% waktu tersebut.[31]
[sunting] Telur paskah dan lawakan Hari April Mop
!Artikel utama untuk bagian ini adalah: Kebohongan Google

Google memiliki sebuah tradisi untuk membuat lawakan Hari April Mop — seperti Google MentalPlex, yang memiliki fitur penggunaan kekuatan mental untuk mencari web.[32] Tahun 2002, mereka mengklaim bahwa merpati merupakan rahasia di belakang mesin pencarinya yang berkembang itu.[33] Tahun 2004, mereka meluncurkan Google Lunar (yang diklaim untuk menghasilkan lowongan pekerjaan di bulan),[34] dan tahun 2005, sebuah minuman fiksi perangsang otak, bernama Google Gulp diluncurkan.[35] Tahun 2006, mereka datang dengan Google Romance, sebuah layanan kencan online.[36] Tahun 2007, Google mengumumkan dua produk lawakan. Pertama adalah sebuah layanan Internet nirkabel gratis disebut TiSP (Toilet Internet Service Provider) [37] dimana seseorang memperoleh koneksi dengan menyiram ujung kabel fiber optik ke toilet mereka dan menunggu sekitar sejam untuk "Plumbing Hardware Dispatcher (PHD)" untuk menghubungkannya dengan Internet.[37] Tambahannya, halaman Gmail Google menampilkan pengumuman untuk Gmail Paper, yang membolehkan pengguna layanan email gratis mereka tersebut mendapat pesan email-nya diterbitkan dan dikirim menuju alamat surat yang dituju.[38]

Beberapa orang mengira pengumuman Gmail tahun 2004 sekitar Hari April Mop (juga penggandaan ruang penyimpanan Gmail menjadi dua gigabita pada 2005) bohong, meskipun keduanya berubah menjadi pengumuman asli. Tahun 2005, sebuah grafik bohong menyatakan keberhasilan Google untuk penyimpanan "tidak terbatas plus satu" GB ditampilkan dalam homepage Gmail.

Layanan Google berisi sejumlah telur Paskah; contohnya, halaman Peralatan Bahasa menawarkan pencarian dengan bahasa "Bork bork bork" dari Koki Swedia, "Hacker" (sebenarnya leet) dari Pig Latin, Elmer Fudd, dan Klingon.[39] Dengan tambahan, kalkulator mesin pencari ini menyediakan Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything dari The Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy oleh Douglas Adams.[40] Sementara kotak pencarian Google dapat digunakan sebagai penukar satuan (juga sebagai kalkulator), beberapa satuan non-standar juga dimasukkan, seperti Smoot. Google juga secara rutin merubah logonya dengan berbagai variasi liburan atau hari khusus sepanjang tahun, seperti Natal, Hari Ibu, atau ulang tahun sejumlah orang terkenal.[41]
[sunting] IPO dan budaya

Banyak orang berspekulasi bahwa IPO Google dapat mempengaruhi budaya perusahaan,[42] karena tekanan pemegang saham untuk pengurangan keuntungan karyawan dan jangka-pendek, atau karena jumlah karyawan perusahaan yang besar dapat menjadi milyuner mendadak. Salam sebuah laporan yang diberikan kepada investor berpotensi, pendiri Sergey Brin dan Larry Page berjanji bahwa IPO tersebut tidak akan merubah budaya perusahaan.[43] Kemudian Page berkata, "Kami berpikir mengenai bagaimana mempertahankan budaya dan elemen menyenangkan kami. Kami membuang banyak waktu untuk membetulkan kantor kami. Kami berpikir penting untuk memiliki banyak karyawan. Orang-orang dikumpulkan bersama di mana-mana. Kami semua berbagi kantor. Kami menyukai kumpulan bangunan ini karena terlihat seperti kampus universitas yang disatukan daripada sebuah taman perkantoran pinggiran kota biasa."[44]

Bagaimanapun, beberapa penganalis menemukan bahwa seiring Google tumbuh, perusahaan ini makin menjadi "korporat". Tahun 2005, artikel di The New York Times dan sumber lainnya menyatakan bahwa Google telah kehilangan anti-korporatnya, tanpa filosofi asal[45][46][47] Dengan maksud untuk memepertahankan budaya unik perusahaan, Google telah menghasilkan seorang Chief Culture Officer pada 2006, yang juga melayani sebagai Direktur Sumber Daya Manusia. Kerja Chief Culture Officer adalah untuk membangun dan mempertahankan budaya dan kerja pada jalan yang benar menuju hasil inti bahwa perusahaan ini didirikan pada awalnya — sebuah perusahaan kecil, langkanya hirarki, sebuah lingkungan yang kolaboratif.[48]
[sunting] Kritik
!Artikel utama untuk bagian ini adalah: Kritik terhadap Google

Sambil bertumbuh, Google telah menerima berbagai kontroversi yang dikaitkan dengan praktik dan layanan bisnis mereka. Contohnya, tujuan Google Book Search adalah untuk memasukkan jutaan buku dan menjadikannya mudah dicari telah memimpin pada penyalahgunaan hak cipta dengan Authors Guild. Masalah hak cipta lainnya adalah mengenai Gmail di Inggris dan beberapa negara lainya. Sekarang, di berbagai belahan dunia, dikenal sebagai Google Mail. Kerjasama Google dengan pemerintah Cina, dan lebih jauh dengan Perancis dan Jerman (setelah penolakan Holocaust) untuk menyaring hasil pencarian berdasarkan hukum dan regulasi daerah yang memimpin kepada klaim penyensoran. Cookie Google dan praktik pengumpulan informasi lainnya telahmemimpin kepada masalah mengenai privasi pengguna. Beberapa pemerintah daerah India telah membicarakan masalah mengenai risiko keamanan yang ditampilkan oleh detil gambar yang disediakan oleh Google Earth.[49] Google juga telah dikritik oleh pengiklan karena melakukan klik bayar, ketika seseorang digunakan untuk melakukan pembayaran pada sebuah iklan tanpa memiliki rasa ketertarikan terhadap produk tersebut. Laporan industri tahun 2006 mengklaim bahwa sekitar 14 hingga 20 persen klik merupakan pemaksaan bayar.[50]

History
Main article: History of Google
Google in 1998
The first iteration of Google production servers was built with inexpensive hardware and was designed to be very fault-tolerant

Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in California.[22] While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page, the two theorized about a better system that analyzed the relationships between websites.[23] They called this new technology PageRank, where a website's relevance was determined by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, that linked back to the original site.[24] A small search engine called Rankdex was already exploring a similar strategy.[25] Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine "BackRub", because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site.[26][27] Eventually, they changed the name to Google, originating from a misspelling of the word "googol",[28][29] the number one followed by one hundred zeros, which was meant to signify the amount of information the search engine was to handle. Originally, Google ran under the Stanford University website, with the domain google.stanford.edu. The domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997,[30] and the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998, at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California.
Financing and initial public offering

The first funding for Google was an August 1998 contribution of US$100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given before Google was even incorporated.[31] On June 7, 1999, a $25 million round of funding was announced,[32] with major investors including the venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital.[31]

Google's initial public offering took place five years later on August 19, 2004. The company offered 19,605,052 shares at a price of $85 per share.[33][34] Shares were sold in a unique online auction format using a system built by Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, underwriters for the deal.[35][36] The sale of $1.67 billion gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion.[37] The vast majority of the 271 million shares remained under the control of Google, and many Google employees became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo!, a competitor of Google, also benefited because it owned 8.4 million shares of Google before the IPO took place.[38]

The stock's performance after the IPO went well, with shares hitting $700 for the first time on October 31, 2007,[39] primarily because of strong sales and earnings in the online advertising market.[40] The surge in stock price was fueled mainly by individual investors, as opposed to large institutional investors and mutual funds.[40] The company is now listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol GOOG and under the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol GGQ1.
Growth

In March 1999, the company moved its offices to Palo Alto, California, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups.[41] The next year, against Page and Brin's initial opposition toward an advertising-funded search engine,[42] Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords.[22] In order to maintain an uncluttered page design and increase speed, advertisements were solely text-based. Keywords were sold based on a combination of price bids and clickthroughs, with bidding starting at five cents per click.[22] This model of selling keyword advertising was first pioneered by Goto.com, an Idealab spin off created by Bill Gross.[43][44] When the company changed names to Overture Services, it sued Google over alleged infringements of the company's pay-per-click and bidding patents. Overture Services would later be bought by Yahoo! and renamed Yahoo! Search Marketing. The case was then settled out of court, with Google agreeing to issue shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license.[45]

During this time, Google was granted a patent describing their PageRank mechanism.[46] The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor. In 2003, after outgrowing two other locations, the company leased their current office complex from Silicon Graphics at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California.[47] The complex has since come to be known as the Googleplex, a play on the word googolplex, the number one followed by a googol zeroes. Three years later, Google would buy the property from SGI for $319 million.[48] By that time, the name "Google" had found its way into everyday language, causing the verb "google" to be added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, denoted as "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet."[49][50]
Acquisitions and partnerships
See also: List of acquisitions by Google

Since 2001, Google has acquired many companies, mainly focusing on small venture capital companies. In 2004, Google acquired Keyhole, Inc..[51] The start-up company developed a product called Earth Viewer that gave a 3-D view of the Earth. Google renamed the service to Google Earth in 2005. Two years later, Google bought the online video site YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock.[52] On April 13, 2007, Google reached an agreement to acquire DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, giving Google valuable relationships that DoubleClick had with Web publishers and advertising agencies.[53] Later that same year, Google purchased GrandCentral for $50 million.[54] The site would later be changed over to Google Voice. On August 5, 2009, Google bought out its first public company, purchasing video software maker On2 Technologies for $106.5 million.[55] Google also acquired Aardvark, a social network search engine, for $50 million. Google commented in their internal blog, "we're looking forward to collaborating to see where we can take it".[56] And, in April 2010, Google announced it had acquired a hardware startup, Agnilux.[57]

In addition to the numerous companies Google has purchased, the company has partnered with other organizations for everything from research to advertising. In 2005, Google partnered with NASA Ames Research Center to build 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m2) of offices.[58] The offices would be used for research projects involving large-scale data management, nanotechnology, distributed computing, and the entrepreneurial space industry. Later that year, Google entered into a partnership with Sun Microsystems in October 2005 to help share and distribute each other's technologies.[59] The company also partnered with AOL of Time Warner,[60] to enhance each other's video search services. Google's 2005 partnerships also included financing the new .mobi top-level domain for mobile devices, along with other companies including Microsoft, Nokia, and Ericsson.[61] Google would later launch "Adsense for Mobile", taking advantage of the emerging mobile advertising market.[62] Increasing their advertising reach even further, Google and Fox Interactive Media of News Corp. entered into a $900 million agreement to provide search and advertising on popular social networking site MySpace.[63]

In 2007, Google began sponsoring NORAD Tracks Santa, a service that pretends to follow Santa Claus' progress on Christmas eve.[64][65][66] Though AOL had previously been the sponsor and key partner for the program, Google displaced the Time Warner company, using Google Earth to "track Santa" in 3-D for the first time.[67] Furthermore, video sharing site YouTube, owned by Google, gave NORAD Tracks Santa its own channel as part of the partnership.[68]

In 2008, Google developed a partnership with GeoEye to launch a satellite providing Google with high-resolution (0.41 m monochrome, 1.65 m color) imagery for Google Earth. The satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on September 6, 2008.[69] Google also announced in 2008 that it was hosting a archive of Life Magazine's photographs as part of its latest partnership. Some of the images in the archive were never published in the magazine.[70] The photos were watermarked and originally had copyright notices posted on all photos, regardless of public domain status.[71]

In 2010, Google makes its first investment in a renewable-energy project, putting up $38.8 million into two wind farms in North Dakota. The company announced the funding at the two locations will generate 169.5 megawatts of power, or enough to supply 55,000 homes. The farms, which were developed by NextEra Energy Resources, will reduce fossil fuel use in the region and return profits. 113 turbines can adjust the pitch to take advantage of wind direction and a computerized control system optimizes maintenance and performance of the windmills. NextEra Energy Resources sold Google a 20 percent stake in the project to get access to capital for project development.[72]

Google adds future predictions to its ever growing arm of investment. Recorded Future is a search engine that searches for ccurrences that are expected or predicted to happen tomorrow and beyond. The search engine has three input boxes that are what, who/where, and when, presenting text search results, charts, or timelines.[73]
Products and services
Google appliance as shown at RSA Conference 2008
Main article: List of Google products
Advertising

Ninety-nine percent of Google's revenue is derived from its advertising programs.[74] For the 2006 fiscal year, the company reported $10.492 billion in total advertising revenues and only $112 million in licensing and other revenues.[75] Google has implemented various innovations in the online advertising market that helped propel them to one of the biggest advertisers in the market. Using technology from the company DoubleClick, Google can determine user interests and target advertisements appropriately so they are relevant to the context they are in and the user that is viewing them.[76][77] Google Analytics allows website owners to track where and how people use their website, allowing for in-depth research into getting users to go where you want them to go.[78]

Google advertisements can be placed on third-party websites in a two-part program. Google's AdWords allows advertisers to display their advertisements in the Google content network, through either a cost-per-click or cost-per-view scheme. The sister service, Google AdSense, allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website, and earn money every time ads are clicked.[79] One of the disadvantages and criticisms of this program is Google's inability to combat click fraud, when a person or automated script "clicks" on advertisements without being interested in the product, just to earn money for the website owner. Industry reports in 2006 claim that approximately 14 to 20 percent of clicks were in fact fraudulent or invalid.[80] In June 2008, Google reached an advertising agreement with Yahoo!, which would have allowed Yahoo! to feature Google advertisements on their web pages. The alliance between the two companies was never completely realized due to antitrust concerns by the U.S. Department of Justice. As a result, Google pulled out of the deal in November 2008.[81][82]
Search engine
Google's search engine in April 2010.

The Google web search engine is the company's most popular service. According to market research published by comScore in November 2009, Google is the dominant search engine in the United States market, with a market share of 65.6%.[83] Google indexes billions of Web pages, so that users can search for the information they desire, through the use of keywords and operators. This basic search engine has spread to specific services as well, including an image search engine, the Google News search site, Google Maps, and more. In early 2006, the company launched Google Video, which allowed users to upload, search, and watch videos from the Internet.[84] In 2009, however, uploads to Google Video were discontinued.[85] The company even developed Google Desktop, a desktop search application used to search for files local to one's computer.

One of the more controversial search services Google hosts is Google Books. The company began scanning books and uploading limited previews, and full books where allowed, into their new book search engine. However, a number of copyright disputes arose, and Google reached a revised settlement in 2009 to limit its scans to books from the U.S., the U.K., Australia and Canada.[86] Furthermore, the Paris Civil Court ruled against Google in late 2009, asking them to remove the works of La Martinière (Éditions du Seuil) from their database.[87] In competition with Amazon.com, Google plans to sell digital versions of new books.[88]
Productivity tools

In addition to its standard web search services, Google has released over the years a number of online productivity tools. Gmail, a free webmail service provided by Google, was launched as an invitation-only beta program on April 1, 2004,[89] and became available to the general public on February 7, 2007.[90] The service was upgraded from beta status on July 7, 2009,[91] at which time it had 146 million users monthly.[92] The service would be the first online email service with one gigabyte of storage, and the first to keep emails from the same conversation together in one thread, similar to an Internet forum.[89] The service currently offers over 7400 MB of free storage with additional storage ranging from 20 GB to 16 TB available for US$5 to $4,056 per year.[93] Furthermore, software developers know Gmail for its pioneering use of AJAX, a programming technique that allows web pages to be interactive without refreshing the browser.[94]

Google Docs, another part of Google's productivity suite, allows users to create, edit, and collaborate on documents in an online environment, not dissimilar to Microsoft Word. The service was originally called Writely, but was obtained by Google on March 9, 2006, where it was released as an invitation-only preview.[95] On June 6 after the acquisition, Google created an experimental spreadsheet editing program,[96] which would be combined with Google Docs on October 10.[97] A program to edit presentations would complete the set on September 17, 2007,[98] before all three services were taken out of beta along with Gmail on July 7, 2009.[91] Google Calendar, a calendar program closely integrated with Gmail,[99] was also taken out of beta that day after its beta release on April 12, 2006.[100]
Other products

Google Translate is a server-side machine translation service, which can translate between 35 different languages. Browser extensions allow for easy access to Google Translate from the browser. The software uses corpus linguistics techniques, where the program "learns" from professionally translated documents, specifically United Nations and European Parliament proceedings.[101] Furthermore, a "suggest a better translation" feature accompanies the translated text, allowing users to indicate where the current translation is incorrect or otherwise inferior to another translation.

In 2007, some reports surfaced that Google was planning the release of its own mobile phone, possibly a competitor to Apple's iPhone.[102][103][104] The project, called Android, turned out not to be a phone but an operating system for mobile devices, which Google acquired and then released as an open-source project under the Apache 2.0 license.[105] Google provides a standard development kit for developers so applications can be created to be run on Android-based phone. In September 2008, T-Mobile released the G1, the first Android-based phone.[106] More than a year later on January 5, 2010, Google released an Android phone under its own company name called the Nexus One.[107]

Other projects Google has worked on include a new collaborative communication service, a web browser, and even a mobile operating system. The first of these was first announced on May 27, 2009. Google Wave was described as a product that helps users communicate and collaborate on the web. The service is Google's "email redesigned", with realtime editing, the ability to embed audio, video, and other media, and extensions that further enhance the communication experience. Google Wave is currently in a developer's preview, where interested users must be invited to test the service. On September 1, 2008, Google pre-announced the upcoming availability of Google Chrome, an open-source web browser,[108] which was then released on September 2, 2008. The next year, on 7 July 2009, Google announced Google Chrome OS, an open-source Linux-based operating system that includes only a web browser and is designed to log users into their Google account.[109][110]
Enterprise products

Google entered the enterprise market in February 2002 with the launch of its Google Search Appliance, targeted toward providing search technology to larger organizations.[111] Providing search for a smaller document repository, Google launched the Mini in 2005.

Late in 2006, Google began to sell Custom Search Business Edition, providing customers with an advertising-free window into Google.com's index.[112] In 2008, Google re-branded its next version of Custom Search Business Edition as Google Site Search.[112]

In 2007, Google launched Google Apps Premier Edition, a version of Google Apps targeted primarily at the business user. It includes such extras as more disk space for e-mail, API access, and premium support, for a price of $50 per user per year. A large implementation of Google Apps with 38,000 users is at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.[113]

Also in 2007, Google acquired Postini[114] and continued to sell the acquired technology[115] as Google Security Services.[116]
Corporate affairs and culture
Left to right, Eric E. Schmidt, Sergey Brin and Larry Page

Google is known for its informal corporate culture, of which the many playful variation on the Google logo are an indicator. In 2007 and 2008, Fortune Magazine placed Google at the top of its list of the hundred best places to work.[20] Google's corporate philosophy embodies such casual principles as "you can make money without doing evil," "you can be serious without a suit," and "work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun."[117]

Google has been criticized for having salaries below industry standards.[118] For example, some system administrators earn no more than $35,000 per year – considered to be quite low for the Bay Area job market.[119] However, Google's stock performance following its IPO has enabled many early employees to be competitively compensated by participation in the corporation's remarkable equity growth.[120]

After the company's IPO in August 2004, it was reported that founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and CEO Eric Schmidt, requested that their base salary be cut to $1.[121] Subsequent offers by the company to increase their salaries have been turned down, primarily because, "their primary compensation continues to come from returns on their ownership stakes in Google. As significant stockholders, their personal wealth is tied directly to sustained stock price appreciation and performance, which provides direct alignment with stockholder interests."[121] Prior to 2004, Schmidt was making $250,000 per year, and Page and Brin each earned a salary of $150,000.[dubious – discuss][121]

They have all declined recent offers of bonuses and increases in compensation by Google's board of directors. In a 2007 report of the United States' richest people, Forbes reported that Sergey Brin and Larry Page were tied for #5 with a net worth of $18.5 billion each.[122]

In 2007 and through early 2008, Google has seen the departure of several top executives. Gideon Yu, former chief financial officer of YouTube, a Google unit, joined Facebook[123] along with Benjamin Ling, a high-ranking engineer, who left in October 2007.[124] In March 2008, two senior Google leaders announced their desire to pursue other opportunities. Sheryl Sandburg, ex-VP of global online sales and operations began her position as COO of Facebook[125] while Ash ElDifrawi, former head of brand advertising, left to become CMO of Netshops Inc.[126]

Google's persistent cookie and other information collection practices have led to concerns over user privacy. As of December 11, 2007, Google, like the Microsoft search engine, stores "personal information for 18 months" and by comparison, AOL (Time Warner) "retain[s] search requests for 13 months",[127] and Yahoo! 90 days.[128]

U.S. District Court Judge Louis Stanton, on July 1, 2008 ordered Google to give YouTube user data / log to Viacom to support its case in a billion-dollar copyright lawsuit against Google.[129][130] Google and Viacom, however, on July 14, 2008, agreed in compromise to protect YouTube users' personal data in the $1 billion copyright lawsuit. Google agreed it will make user information and Internet protocol addresses from its YouTube subsidiary anonymous before handing over the data to Viacom. The privacy deal also applied to other litigants including the FA Premier League, the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organisation and the Scottish Premier League.[131][132] The deal however did not extend the anonymity to employees, since Viacom would prove that Google staff are aware of uploading of illegal material to the site. The parties therefore will further meet on the matter lest the data be made available to the court.[133]
Googleplex
The Googleplex
Main article: Googleplex

Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California is referred to as "the Googleplex" in a play of words; a googolplex being 1010100, or a one followed by a googol of zeros, and the HQ being a complex of buildings (cf. multiplex, cineplex, etc). The lobby is decorated with a piano, lava lamps, old server clusters, and a projection of search queries on the wall. The hallways are full of exercise balls and bicycles. Each employee has access to the corporate recreation center. Recreational amenities are scattered throughout the campus and include a workout room with weights and rowing machines, locker rooms, washers and dryers, a massage room, assorted video games, foosball, a baby grand piano, a pool table, and ping pong. In addition to the rec room, there are snack rooms stocked with various foods and drinks.[134]
Sign at the Googleplex

In 2006, Google moved into 311,000 square feet (28,900 m2) of office space in New York City, at 111 Eighth Ave. in Manhattan.[135] The office was specially designed and built for Google and houses its largest advertising sales team, which has been instrumental in securing large partnerships, most recently deals with MySpace and AOL.[135] In 2003, they added an engineering staff in New York City, which has been responsible for more than 100 engineering projects, including Google Maps, Google Spreadsheets, and others.[135] It is estimated that the building costs Google $10 million per year to rent and is similar in design and functionality to its Mountain View headquarters, including foosball, air hockey, and ping-pong tables, as well as a video game area.[135] In November 2006, Google opened offices on Carnegie Mellon's campus in Pittsburgh.[136] By late 2006, Google also established a new headquarters for its AdWords division in Ann Arbor, Michigan.[137] Furthermore, Google has offices all around the world, and in the United States, including Atlanta, Austin, Boulder, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC.

Google is taking steps to ensure that their operations are environmentally sound. In October 2006, the company announced plans to install thousands of solar panels to provide up to 1.6 megawatts of electricity, enough to satisfy approximately 30% of the campus' energy needs.[138] The system will be the largest solar power system constructed on a U.S. corporate campus and one of the largest on any corporate site in the world.[138] Google has faced accusations in Harper's Magazine[139] of being extremely excessive with their energy usage, and were accused of employing their "Don't be evil" motto as well as their very public energy saving campaigns as means of trying to cover up or make up for the massive amounts of energy their servers actually require.

In 2009 Google announced it was deploying herds of goats to keep grassland around the Googleplex short, helping to prevent the threat from seasonal bush fires while also reducing the carbon footprint of mowing the extensive grounds.[140][141]
Innovation Time Off

As a motivation technique (usually called Innovation Time Off), all Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time (one day per week) on projects that interest them. Some of Google's newer services, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense originated from these independent endeavors.[142] In a talk at Stanford University, Marissa Mayer, Google's Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, stated that her analysis showed that 50% of the new product launches originated from the 20% time.[143]
Easter eggs and April Fool's Day jokes
Main article: Google's hoaxes

Google has a tradition of creating April Fool's Day jokes—such as Google MentalPlex, which allegedly featured the use of mental power to search the web.[144] In 2002, they claimed that pigeons were the secret behind their growing search engine.[145] In 2004, they featured Google Lunar (which claimed to feature jobs on the moon),[146] and in 2005, a fictitious brain-boosting drink, termed Google Gulp was announced.[147] In 2006, they came up with Google Romance, a hypothetical online dating service.[148] In 2007, Google announced two joke products. The first was a free wireless Internet service called TiSP (Toilet Internet Service Provider)[149] in which one obtained a connection by flushing one end of a fiber-optic cable down their toilet and waiting only an hour for a "Plumbing Hardware Dispatcher (PHD)" to connect it to the Internet.[149] Additionally, Google's Gmail page displayed an announcement for Gmail Paper, which allows users of their free email service to have email messages printed and shipped to a snail mail address.[150] In 2010, for April Fool's Day, Google jokingly changed its company name to Topeka.[151][152] This was in honor of Topeka, Kansas, the mayor of which actually changed its name to Google for a short amount of time in an attempt to sway Google's decision in its new Google Fiber Project.

Google's services contain a number of Easter eggs; for instance, the Language Tools page offers the search interface in the Swedish Chef's "Bork bork bork," Pig Latin, "Hacker" (actually leetspeak), Elmer Fudd, and Klingon.[153] In addition, the search engine calculator provides the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.[154] As Google’s search box can be used as a unit converter (as well as a calculator), some non-standard units are built in, such as the Smoot. A newly discovered easter egg is the spell-checker's result for the properly spelled word "recursion". The spell-checker built into Google search returns "Did you mean: recursion?" in a recursive link back to the same page.[155] In Google Maps, searching for directions between places, such as Los Angeles and Tokyo results in one direction being "kayak across the Pacific Ocean." Google also routinely modifies its logo in accordance with various holidays or special events throughout the year, such as Christmas, Mother's Day, or the birthdays of various notable individuals.[156] Other logo switches are based on search terms. For instance, if the term "ascii art" (all lower-case required) is searched, an ASCII art version of the Google logo will appear next to the search box.[157]
IPO and culture

Many people speculated that Google's IPO would inevitably lead to changes in the company's culture,[158] because of shareholder pressure for employee benefit reductions and short-term advances, or because a large number of the company's employees would suddenly become millionaires on paper. In a report given to potential investors, co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page promised that the IPO would not change the company's culture.[159] Later Mr. Page said, "We think a lot about how to maintain our culture and the fun elements. We spent a lot of time getting our offices right. We think it's important to have a high density of people. People are packed together everywhere. We all share offices. We like this set of buildings because it's more like a densely packed university campus than a typical suburban office park."[160]

However, in 2005, articles in The New York Times and other sources began suggesting that Google had lost its anti-corporate, no evil philosophy.[161][162][163] In an effort to maintain the company's unique culture, Google has designated a Chief Culture Officer in 2006, who also serves as the Director of Human Resources. The purpose of the Chief Culture Officer is to develop and maintain the culture and work on ways to keep true to the core values that the company was founded on in the beginning—a flat organization with a collaborative environment.[164]

Google has faced allegations of sexism and ageism from former employees.[165][166]
Philanthropy
Main article: Google.org

In 2004, Google formed a not for-profit philanthropic wing, Google.org, with a start-up fund of $1 billion.[167] The express mission of the organization is to create awareness about climate change, global public health, and global poverty. One of its first projects is to develop a viable plug-in hybrid electric vehicle that can attain 100 mpg. The founder is Dr Larry Brilliant[168] and the current director is Megan Smith.[169]

In 2008 Google announced its "project 10100" which accepted ideas for how to help the community and then will allow Google users to vote on their favorites.[170]
Network neutrality

Google is a noted supporter of network neutrality. According to Google's Guide to Net Neutrality:

Network neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet. The Internet has operated according to this neutrality principle since its earliest days... Fundamentally, net neutrality is about equal access to the Internet. In our view, the broadband carriers should not be permitted to use their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content. Just as telephone companies are not permitted to tell consumers who they can call or what they can say, broadband carriers should not be allowed to use their market power to control activity online.[171]

On February 7, 2006, Vinton Cerf, a co-inventor of the Internet Protocol (IP), and current Vice President and "Chief Internet Evangelist" at Google, in testimony before Congress, said, "allowing broadband carriers to control what people see and do online would fundamentally undermine the principles that have made the Internet such a success."[172]
"Google Guys"

Left: Sergey Brin. Right: Larry Page

The term "Google Guys" refers to the founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The term applies to them as a group because their fortunes are directly linked with the success of Google, since they both hold a roughly equal number of the company's shares and therefore have the same voting power, and they are considered to have roughly the same amount of influence over the company. [173] The nickname originated from a Playboy interview with the duo in September 2004, in an article entitled "Google Guys, America's Newest Billionaires". This was the first interview that the duo gave after Google's initial public offering in the previous month, which made them both billionaires. Because of the IPO, they were both more open about the company's history and policies than they had been in previous interviews. Google's CEO, Eric E. Schmidt, also wields considerable power over the company and is sometimes included among the "Guys". However, his net worth is considerably less than that of the two founders of Google.[174]

Following Google's IPO, in 2004, the net worth of both individuals was a reported US$4 billion, tying them with each other as the 43rd richest Americans. The following year, their wealth grew to $11 billion each. [175] They each lost $1 billion in wealth in 2006 when Google performed a stock sell-off. [176] The two typically diversify their net worth outside of the company. From 2004 to 2006, they each sold about 7.2 million Google shares as part of an 18-month diversification plan, giving them each $1.22 billion, making them billionaires in terms of real money rather than in shares only. After the sale, the Google Guys each still held 81.1% of their stock holdings. Together with company CEO Schmidt, they now hold 27% of Google's outstanding shares, and 40.4% of the voting power.[177][dated info] In 2010, Forbes magazine listed both individuals as the 24th richest people in the world, with a net worth of $17.5 billion each.[178] The two were chosen as ABC News's "People of the Year" for 2004.[179]

Google
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about the corporation. For the search engine, see Google search. For the number 10100, see Googol. For other uses, see Google (disambiguation).
This article is semi-protected.
Google Inc. Newgooglelogo.png
Type Public (NASDAQ: GOOG, FWB: GGQ1)
Industry Internet, Computer software
Founded Menlo Park, California (September 4, 1998 (1998-09-04))[1]
Founder(s) Sergey M. Brin
Lawrence E. Page
Headquarters Mountain View, California, United States
Area served Worldwide
Key people Eric E. Schmidt
(Chairman & CEO)
Sergey M. Brin
(Technology President)
Lawrence E. Page
(Products President)
Products See list of Google products.
Revenue ▲US$23.651 billion (2009)[2][3]
Operating income ▲US$8.312 billion (2009)[2][3]
Profit ▲US$6.520 billion (2009)[2][3]
Total assets ▲US$40.497 billion (2009)[2][3]
Total equity ▲US$36.004 billion (2009)[3]
Employees 20,621 (2010)[4]
Subsidiaries YouTube, DoubleClick, GrandCentral, Picnik
Website Google.com

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG, FWB: GGQ1) is a multinational public cloud computing and Internet search technologies corporation. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products,[5] and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program.[2][6] The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, often dubbed the "Google Guys",[7][8][9][10] while the two were attending Stanford University as Ph.D. candidates. It was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 4, 1998, with its initial public offering to follow on August 19, 2004. The company's stated mission from the outset was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful",[11] and the company's unofficial slogan – coined by Google engineer Paul Buchheit – is Don't be evil.[12][13] In 2006, the company moved to their current headquarters in Mountain View, California.

Google runs over one million servers in data centers around the world,[14] and processes over one billion search requests[15] and twenty petabytes of user-generated data every day.[16][17][18] Google's rapid growth since its incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions and partnerships beyond the company's core search engine. The company offers online productivity software, such as its Gmail e-mail software, and social networking tools, including Orkut and, more recently, Google Buzz. Google's products extend to the desktop as well, with applications such as the web browser Google Chrome, the Picasa photo organization and editing software, and the Google Talk instant messaging application. More notably, Google leads the development of the Android mobile phone operating system, used on a number of HTC phones such as the Nexus One and Droid Eris. Because of its popularity and numerous products, Alexa lists Google as the Internet's most visited website.[19] Google is also Fortune Magazine's fourth best place to work,[20] and BrandZ's most powerful brand in the world.[21] However, the company has also faced criticism over issues relating to the privacy of personal information, copyright, and censorship.


--

Yahoo!
Dari Wikipedia bahasa Indonesia, ensiklopedia bebas
(Dialihkan dari Yahoo)
Langsung ke: navigasi, cari
Yahoo! Inc.
Logo Yahoo!
Jenis Public (NASDAQ: YHOO)
Industri Internet
Piranti lunak
Didirikan Santa Clara, California
(March 1, 1995)
Pendiri Jerry Yang
David Filo
Kantor pusat 701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, California,
United States
Daerah layanan Seluruh dunia
Tokoh penting Carol Bartz (CEO)
Roy J. Bostock (Chairman)
Jerry Yang (Co-founder)
David Filo (Co-founder)
Produk See list of Yahoo products.
Pendapatan Red Arrow Down.svgUS$6,460 miliar (2009)[1]
Laba operasional Red Arrow Down.svg$3,589 miliar (2009)[1]
Laba bersih Green Arrow Up Darker.svg$597,99 juta (2009)[1]
Aset total Green Arrow Up Darker.svg$14,936 miliar (2009)[1]
Ekuitas total Green Arrow Up Darker.svg$12,493 miliar (2009)[1]
Karyawan 13.900 (Q4 2009)[2]
Anak perusahaan List of acquisitions by Yahoo!
Situs web www.yahoo.com

Yahoo! adalah sebuah portal web populer yang dioperasikan perusahaan yang bernama Yahoo! Inc. yang dirintis oleh oleh David Filo dan Jerry Yang. Yahoo! pada awalnya hanyalah semacam bookmark (petunjuk halaman buku), ide itu berawal pada bulan April 1994, saat itu dua orang alumni Universitas Stanford mendapat liburan ketika profesor mereka pergi ke luar kota karena cuti besar.

Dua mahasiswa teknik tersebut mempunyai sedikit pekerjaan yang harus dilakukan selain menjelajah internet. Mereka tidak membutuhkan waktu lama untuk mengkompilasi sebuah daftar bookmark yang besar, yang dikelompokkan berdasarkan subyek.

Kemudian mereka berpikir untuk memasukannya di web, dan mulai bekerja membuat sebuah program database untuk menanganinya sehingga dapat memberikan hasil secara online.

Koleksi bookmark tersebut, sekarang dikenal sebagai Yahoo!, menerima sejumlah 80 juta pengunjung setiap bulan (sensus tahun 2000)

Yahoo!
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Yahoo)
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about the corporation. For other uses, see Yahoo! (disambiguation).
Yahoo! Inc. Yahoo Logo.svg
Type Public (NASDAQ: YHOO)
Industry Internet, Computer software
Founded Santa Clara, California
(March 1, 1995)
Founder(s) Jerry Yang
David Filo
Headquarters Sunnyvale, California, United States
Area served Worldwide
Key people Carol Bartz (CEO)
Roy J. Bostock (Chairman)
Jerry Yang (Co-founder)
David Filo (Co-founder)
Products See list of Yahoo products.
Revenue ▼ $6.460 billion (2009)[1]
Operating income ▼ $3.589 billion (2009)[1]
Profit ▲ $597.99 million (2009)[1]
Total assets ▲ $14.936 billion (2009)[1]
Total equity ▲ $12.493 billion (2009)[1]
Employees 13,900 (Q4 2009)[2]
Subsidiaries List of acquisitions by Yahoo!
Website Yahoo.com

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) is an American public corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, (in Silicon Valley), that provides Internet services worldwide. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine (Yahoo! Search), Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, advertising, online mapping (Yahoo! Maps), video sharing (Yahoo! Video), and social media websites and services. As of January, 2010, Yahoo held the world's largest market share in online display advertising. JP Morgan put the company’s US market share for display ads at 17%, well ahead of No. 2 Microsoft at 11% and AOL at 7%.[3]

Yahoo! was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994 and was incorporated on March 1, 1995. On January 13, 2009, Yahoo! appointed Carol Bartz, former executive chairperson of Autodesk, as its new chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors.[4]

According to Web traffic analysis companies (including Compete.com, comScore,[5] Alexa Internet,[6] Netcraft,[7] and Nielsen ratings[8]), the domain yahoo.com attracted at least 1.575 billion visitors annually by 2008.[9] The global network of Yahoo! websites receives 3.4 billion page views per day on average as of October 2007[update].

History and growth
[edit] Early history (1994–1999)
Yahoo! co-founders Jerry Yang (left) and David Filo (right)

In January 1994, Jerry Yang and David Filo were Electrical Engineering graduate students at Stanford University. In April 1994, "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" was renamed "Yahoo!", for which the official backronym is "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle".[10][11] Filo and Yang said they selected the name because they liked the word's general definition, which comes from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: "rude, unsophisticated and uncouth".[12] Its URL was akebono.stanford.edu/yahoo.[13]

The Yahoo! domain was created on January 18, 1995.[14] Yang and Filo realized their website had massive business potential, and on March 1, 1995, Yahoo! was incorporated.[15] On April 5, 1995, Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital provided Yahoo! with two rounds of venture capital, raising approximately $3 million.[16][17] On April 12, 1996, Yahoo! had its initial public offering, raising $33.8 million, by selling 2.6 million shares at $13 each.

Like many web search engines and web directories, Yahoo! diversified into a web portal. In the late 1990s, Yahoo!, MSN, Lycos, Excite and other Web portals were growing rapidly. Web portal providers rushed to acquire companies to expand their range of services, in the hope of increasing the time a user stayed at the portal.

On March 8, 1997, Yahoo! acquired online communications company Four11. Four11's webmail service, RocketMail, became Yahoo! Mail. Yahoo! also acquired ClassicGames.com and turned it into Yahoo! Games. Yahoo! then acquired direct marketing company Yoyodyne Entertainment, Inc. on October 12. On March 8, 1998, Yahoo! launched Yahoo! Pager,[18] an instant messaging service that was renamed Yahoo! Messenger a year later. On January 28, 1999, Yahoo! acquired web hosting provider GeoCities. Another company Yahoo! acquired was eGroups, which became Yahoo! Groups after the acquisition on June 28, 2000.
Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale
[edit] Dot-com bubble (2000–2001)

Yahoo! stock doubled in price in the last month of 1999.[19] On January 3, 2000, at the height of the Dot-com boom, Yahoo! stocks closed at an all-time high of $118.75 a share. Sixteen days later, shares in Yahoo! Japan became the first stocks in Japanese history to trade at over ¥100,000,000, reaching a price of ¥101.4 million ($94,780 at that time).[20]

On February 7, 2000, the Yahoo! domain was brought to a halt for a few hours as it was the victim of a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS).[21] On the next day, its shares rose about $16, or 4.5 percent as the failure was blamed on hackers rather than on an internal glitch, unlike a fault with eBay earlier that year.

During the dot-com boom, the cable news station CNBC also reported that Yahoo! and eBay were discussing a 50/50 merger.[22] Although the merger never materialized the two companies decided to form a marketing/advertising alliance six years later in 2006.[23]

On June 26, 2000, Yahoo! and Google signed an agreement which retained Google as the default worldwide-web search engine for Yahoo! following a beta trial in 1999.[24]
[edit] Post dot-com bubble (2002–2009)

Yahoo! was one of the surviving large Internet companies after the dot-com bubble burst. Nevertheless, on September 26, 2001, Yahoo! stocks closed at a five-year low of $4.06 (split-adjusted).

Yahoo! formed partnerships with telecommunications and Internet providers to create content-rich broadband services to compete with AOL. On June 3, 2002, SBC and Yahoo! launched a national co-branded dial-up Internet access service.[25] In July 2003, BT Group Openworld announced an alliance with Yahoo!.[26] On August 23, 2005, Yahoo! and Verizon Communications launched an integrated DSL service.[27]

In late 2002, Yahoo! began to bolster its search services by acquiring other search engines. In December 2002, Yahoo! acquired Inktomi Corporation. In February 2005, Yahoo! acquired Konfabulator and rebranded it Yahoo! Widgets,[28] a desktop application and in July 2003, it acquired Overture Services, Inc. and its subsidiaries AltaVista and AlltheWeb. On February 18, 2004, Yahoo! dropped Google-powered results and returned to using its own technology to provide search results.

In 2004, in response to Google's release of Gmail, Yahoo! upgraded the storage of all free Yahoo! Mail accounts from 4 MB to 1 GB, and all Yahoo! Mail Plus accounts to 2 GB. On July 9, 2004, Yahoo! acquired e-mail provider Oddpost to add an Ajax interface to Yahoo! Mail.[29] On October 13, 2005, Yahoo! and Microsoft announced that Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger would become interoperable. In 2007, Yahoo! took out the storage meters, thus allowing users unlimited storage.

Yahoo! continued acquiring companies to expand its range of services, particularly Web 2.0 services. Yahoo! Launchcast became Yahoo! Music on February 9, 2005. On March 20, 2005, Yahoo! purchased photo sharing service Flickr.[30] On March 29, 2005, the company launched its blogging and social networking service Yahoo! 360°. In June 2005, Yahoo! acquired blo.gs, a service based on RSS feed aggregation. Yahoo! then bought online social event calendar Upcoming.org on October 4, 2005. Yahoo! acquired social bookmark site del.icio.us on December 9, 2005 and then playlist sharing community Webjay on January 9, 2006.

On August 27, 2007, Yahoo! released a new version of Yahoo! Mail. It adds Yahoo! Messenger integration. (which includes Windows Live Messenger due to the networks' federation) and free text messages (not necessarily free to the receiver) to mobile phones in the U.S., Canada, India and the Philippines.[31]

On January 29, 2008, Yahoo! announced that the company was laying off 1,000 employees as the company had suffered severely in its inability to effectively compete with industry search leader Google. The cuts represent 7 percent of the company's workforce of 14,300. Employees are being invited to apply for an unknown number of new positions that are expected to open as the company expands areas that promise faster growth.[32]

In February, 2008, Yahoo! acquired Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Maven Networks, a supplier of internet video players and video advertising tools, for approx. $160 million.

Yahoo! announced on November 17, 2008 that Yang would be stepping down as CEO.[33]

On December 10, 2008, Yahoo! began laying off 1,520 employees around the world as the company managed its way through the global economic downturn.[34] By carefully managing expenses, Yahoo! has remained one of the most profitable pure-Internet companies in the world[35] , and maintains billions of dollars on its balance sheet[36], despite continued "softness" in the advertising world.
[edit] Acquisition attempt by Microsoft

Microsoft and Yahoo! pursued merger discussions in 2005, 2006, and 2007, that were all ultimately unsuccessful. At the time, analysts were skeptical about the wisdom of a business combination.[37][38]

On February 1, 2008, after its friendly takeover offer was rebuffed by Yahoo!, Microsoft made an unsolicited takeover bid to buy Yahoo! for US$44.6 billion in cash and stock.[39][40] Days later, Yahoo! considered alternatives to the merger with Microsoft, including a merger with internet giant Google[41] or a potential transaction with News Corp.[42] However, on February 11, 2008, Yahoo! decided to reject Microsoft's offer as "substantially undervaluing" Yahoo!'s brand, audience, investments, and growth prospects.[43] As of February 22, two Detroit based pension companies have sued Yahoo! and their board of directors for breaching their duty to shareholders by opposing Microsoft's takeover bid and pursuing "value destructive" third-party deals.[44][dead link] In early March, Google CEO Eric Schmidt went on record saying that he was concerned that a potential MICROSOFT-Yahoo! merger might hurt the Internet by compromising its openness.[45] The value of Microsoft's cash and stock offer declined with Microsoft's stock price, falling to $42.2 billion by April 4.[46] On April 5, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent a letter to Yahoo!'s board of directors stating that if within three weeks they had not accepted the deal, Microsoft would approach shareholders directly in hopes of a electing a new board and moving forward with merger talks; this is known as a hostile takeover.[47][dead link] In response, Yahoo! stated on April 7 that they were not against a merger, but that they wanted a better offer. In addition, they stated that Microsoft's "aggressive" approach was worsening their relationship and the chances of a "friendly" merger.[48] Later the same day, Yahoo! stated that the original $45 billion offer was not acceptable.[48] Following this, there has been considerable discussion of having Time Warner's AOL and Yahoo! merge, instead of the originally proposed Microsoft deal.[49]

On May 3, 2008, Microsoft withdrew the offer. During a meeting between Ballmer and Yang, Microsoft had offered to raise its offer by $5 billion to $33 per share, while Yahoo! demanded $37. One of Ballmer's lieutenants suggested that Yang would implement a poison pill to make the takeover as difficult as possible, saying "They are going to burn the furniture if we go hostile. They are going to destroy the place."[50][51]

Analysts say that Yahoo!'s shares, which closed at $28.67 on May 2, are likely to drop below $25 and perhaps as low as $20 on May 5, which would put significant pressure on Yang to engineer a turnaround of the company. Some suggest that institutional investors would file lawsuits against Yahoo!'s board of directors for not acting in shareholder interest by refusing Microsoft's offer.[52][53]

On May 5, 2008, following Microsoft's withdrawal Yahoo!'s stock plunged some 15% lower to $23.02 in Monday trading and trimmed about $6 billion off of its market capitalization.[54]

After Microsoft's failed bid to acquire Yahoo!, Microsoft is rumored to be looking at acquiring LiveDoor, a leading Japanese portal and the leading blogging service in Japan, to strengthen its position against Yahoo! Japan.

On June 12, 2008, Yahoo announced that it had ended all talks with Microsoft about purchasing either part of the business (the search advertising business) or all of the company. Talks had taken place the previous weekend (June 8), during which Microsoft allegedly told Yahoo that it was no longer interested in a purchase of the entire company at the price offered earlier -- $33/share. Also on June 12, Yahoo announced a non-exclusive search advertising alliance with Google.[55] Upon this announcement, many executives and senior employees have announced their plans to leave the company as it appears that they have lost confidence in Yahoo's strategies. According to market analysts, these pending departures are also impacting Wall Street's perception of the company.[56]

On July 7, 2008, Microsoft said it would reconsider proposing another bid for Yahoo if the company's nine directors were ousted at the annual meeting scheduled to be held on August 1, 2008. Microsoft believes it would be able to better negotiate with a new board.[57]

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, calling the current board irrational in its approach to talks with Microsoft, launched a proxy fight to replace Yahoo's board. On July 21, 2008 Yahoo settled with Carl Icahn, agreeing to appoint him and two allies to an expanded board.

On November 20, 2008, almost 10 months after Microsoft's initial offer of $33 per share, Yahoo's stock (YHOO) dropped to a 52-week low, trading at only $8.94 per share.[58]

On November 30, 2008, Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo's Search business for $20 billion.[59]

On July 29, 2009, it was announced with a 10 year deal that Microsoft will have full access to Yahoo search engine to be used in Microsoft future projects for its search engine Bing.[60] Under the deal, Microsoft was not required to pay any cash up front to Yahoo. The day after the deal was announced, Yahoo's share price declined more than 10% to $15.14, about 60% lower than Microsoft's takeover bid a year earlier.
[edit] Change in direction under Carol Bartz

Yahoo! has tried to change its direction since chief executive Carol Bartz replaced co-founder Jerry Yang in January 2009.[61]

In July, Microsoft and Yahoo! agreed to a deal that will see Yahoo!'s websites use both Microsoft's search technology and search advertising. Yahoo! in turn will become the sales team for banner advertising for both companies. While Microsoft will provide algorithmic search results, Yahoo! will control the presentation and personalization of results for searches on its pages. This deal is not expected to be finalised before spring 2010 and is awaiting regulatory approval.

On July 21, 2009, Yahoo! launched a new version of its front page, called Metro. The new page allows users to customize it through the prominent "My Favorites" panel on the left side and integrate third-party web services and launch them within one page. Such applications include pages of Netflix, E-trade, Facebook, and other sites.[62]
[edit] Products and services
Main article: List of Yahoo-owned sites and services

Yahoo! provides a wide array of internet services that cater to most online activities. It operates the web portal http://www.yahoo.com which provides content including the latest news, entertainment, and sports information, and gives users quick access to other Yahoo! services like Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Maps, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Groups and Yahoo! Messenger. The majority of the product offerings are available globally in more than 20 languages.
[edit] Storing personal information

As of December 11, 2007, Google and Microsoft's Bing "store personal information for 18 months" and Yahoo! and AOL (Time Warner) "retain search requests for 13 months".[63]
[edit] Communication

Yahoo! provides internet communication services such as Yahoo! Messenger and Yahoo! Mail, the largest e-mail service in the world, with almost half the market share.[64] In March 2007, Yahoo! announced that their e-mail service would offer unlimited storage beginning May 2007.[65]

Yahoo! also offers social networking services and user-generated content in products such as My Web, Yahoo! Personals, Yahoo! 360°, Delicious, Flickr, and Yahoo! Buzz.

Yahoo! Photos was shut down on September 20, 2007 in favor of Flickr. On October 16, 2007, Yahoo! announced that they will no longer provide support or perform bug fixes on Yahoo! 360° as they intend to abandon it in early 2008 in favor of a "universal profile" that will be similar to their Mash experimental system.[66]
[edit] Content

Yahoo! partners with hundreds of premier content providers in products such as Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Music, Yahoo! Movies, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Answers and Yahoo! Games to provide media contents and news. Yahoo! also provides a personalization service, My Yahoo!, which enables users to collect their favorite Yahoo! features, content feeds, and information into a single page.

On March 31, 2008 Yahoo! launched web portal shine.yahoo.com another Yahoo! property dedicated to women between the ages of 25 and 54. Yahoo! called this demographic underserved by current Yahoo! properties.
[edit] Co-branded Internet services

Yahoo! has developed partnerships with different broadband providers such as AT&T (via BellSouth & SBC), Verizon Communications, Rogers Communications and British Telecom, offering a range of free and premium Yahoo! content and services to subscribers.
[edit] Mobile

Yahoo! Mobile includes services for on-the-go messaging, such as email, instant messaging, and mobile blogging; information, such as search and alerts; and fun and games, including ring tones, mobile games, and Yahoo! Photos for camera phones. These require software to be installed on the user's device.
[edit] oneSearch

Yahoo! introduced its Internet search system, called oneSearch, developed for mobile phones on March 20, 2007. The company's officials stated that in distinction from ordinary Web searches, Yahoo!'s new service presents a list of actual information, which may include: news headlines, images from Yahoo!'s Flickr photos site, business listings, local weather and links to other sites. Instead of showing only, for example, popular movies or some critical reviews, oneSearch lists local theaters that at the moment are playing a certain movie, user ratings and news headlines regarding the movie. A zip code or city name is required for Yahoo! oneSearch to start delivering local search results.

The results of a Web search are listed on a single page and are prioritized into categories. The list of results is based on calculations that Yahoo! computers make on certain information the user is seeking.[67]

Yahoo! has announced they also plan to adopt Novarra's mobile content transcoding service for the oneSearch platform.[68]
[edit] Commerce

Yahoo! offers commerce services such as Yahoo! Shopping, Yahoo! Autos, Yahoo! Real Estate and Yahoo! Travel, which enables users to gather relevant information and make commercial transactions and purchases online. In addition, Yahoo! offers an e-commerce platform called Yahoo! Merchant Solutions (also known as Yahoo! Store) and hosts more Top 500 internet retailers than any other hosted e-commerce solution. Yahoo! Auctions were discontinued in 2007 except for Asia.[69]
[edit] Small business

Yahoo! provides services such as Yahoo! Domains, Yahoo! Web Hosting, Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, Yahoo! Business Email, and Yahoo! Store to small business owners and professionals allowing them to build their own online stores using Yahoo!'s tools.

Yahoo! also offers HotJobs to help recruiters find the talent they seek.
[edit] Advertising

Yahoo! Search Marketing provides services such as Sponsored Search, Local Advertising, and Product/Travel/Directory Submit that let different businesses advertise their products and services on the Yahoo! network. Yahoo! Publisher Network is an advertising tool for online publishers to place advertisements relevant to their content to monetize their websites.[70]

Yahoo! launched its new Internet advertisement sales system on February 5, 2007 called Panama. It allows advertisers to bid for search terms based on their popularity to display their ads on search results pages. The system takes bids, ad quality, click-through rates and other factors into consideration in determining how ads are ranked on search results pages. Through Panama, Yahoo! aims to provide more relevant search results to users, a better overall experience, as well as increase monetization—to earn more from the ads it shows.[71]

On April 7, 2008, Yahoo! announced APT from Yahoo!, which was originally called AMP! from Yahoo![72], an online advertising management platform.[73] The platform seeks to simplify advertising sales by unifying buyer and seller markets. The service was launched in September 2008.[74]
[edit] Yahoo! Next

Yahoo! Next is an incubation ground for future Yahoo! technologies currently in their beta testing phase. It contains forums for Yahoo! users to give feedback to assist in the development of these future Yahoo! technologies. it was created by Jerry Page and David Shin.
[edit] Yahoo! BOSS

Yahoo! Search BOSS is a new service that allows developers to build search applications based on Yahoo!'s search technology.[75] Early Partners in the program include Hakia, Me.dium, Delver, Daylife and Yebol.[76]
[edit] Yahoo! Meme

Yahoo! Meme is a beta social service, similar to the popular social networking site Twitter.
[edit] Revenue model

About 88% of total revenues for the fiscal year 2006 came from marketing services. The largest segment of it comes from search advertising, where advertisers bid for search terms to display their ads on the search results, on average Yahoo! makes 2.5 cents to 3 cents from each search. With the new search advertising system "Panama" Yahoo! aims to increase revenue generated from search.[77]

Other forms of advertising which bring in revenue for Yahoo! include display and contextual advertising.

Working with comScore, The New York Times found that Yahoo! is able to collect far more data about Web users than its competitors from its Web sites and its advertising network. By one measure, on average Yahoo! had the potential in December 2007 to build a profile of 2,500 records per month about each of its visitors.[78]
[edit] Criticism and controversy
[edit] Nazi memorabilia controversy
For more details on this topic, see LICRA v. Yahoo!.

In 2000, Yahoo! was taken to court in France by parties seeking to prevent French citizens from purchasing memorabilia relating to the Nazi Party. Yahoo! France had already instituted policies preventing the sale of Nazi memorabilia on its site, and prohibiting Nazi-based discussions on its message boards, but the parties sought to have Yahoo! introduce censorship technology to block French citizens from accessing similar material on Yahoo! websites in countries where local laws permitted Nazi related auctions/discussions.[79]
[edit] Yahoo! paid inclusion controversy

In March 2004, Yahoo! launched a paid inclusion program whereby commercial websites are guaranteed listings on the Yahoo! search engine after payment.[80] This scheme is lucrative, but has proved unpopular both with website marketers (who are reluctant to pay), and the public (who are unhappy about the paid-for listings being indistinguishable from other search results).[81] As of October 2006, Paid Inclusion doesn't guarantee any commercial listing, it only helps the paid inclusion customers, by crawling their site more often and by providing some statistics on the searches that led to the page and some additional smart links (provided by customers as feeds) below the actual url.
[edit] Adware and spyware

Yahoo! has also been criticized for providing ads via the Yahoo ad network to companies who display them through spyware and adware which display on-screen pop-ups, generated from adware that a user may have installed on their computer without realizing it, sometimes by accepting online offers to download software to fix computer clocks or improve computer security, add browser enhancements, etc. As an example, users who have allowed their machine to become infected with spyware will see advertising pop-ups generated from advertising distributor Walnut Ventures, who had a direct partnership with Direct Revenue.[82][83]
[edit] Work in the People's Republic of China
“ While technologically and financially you [Yahoo] are giants, morally you are pygmies[84] ”

—Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (2007)

Yahoo!, along with Google China, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, AOL, Skype, Nortel and others, has cooperated with the Chinese government in implementing a system of internet censorship in mainland China.

Unlike Google or Microsoft, which keep confidential records of its users outside mainland China, Yahoo! stated that the company will not protect the privacy and confidentiality of its Chinese customers from the authorities.[85]

Human rights advocates such as Human Rights Watch and media groups such as Reporters Without Borders state that it is "ironic that companies whose existence depends on freedom of information and expression have taken on the role of censor."[86]
[edit] Imprisonment of Chinese dissidents
[edit] Shi Tao
Main article: Shi Tao

In September 2005, Reporters Without Borders reported the following story. In April 2005, Shi Tao, a journalist working for a Chinese newspaper, was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Changsha Intermediate People's Court of Hunan Province, China (First trial case no. 29), for "providing state secrets to foreign entities". The "secrets" were a brief list of censorship orders he sent from a Yahoo! Mail account to the Asia Democracy Forum before the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Incident.[87]

The verdict as published by the Chinese government stated the following. Shi Tao had sent the email through an anonymous Yahoo! account. Yahoo! Holdings (the Hong Kong subsidiary of Yahoo) told the Chinese government that the IP address used to send the email was registered by the Hunan newspaper that Shi Tao worked for. Police went straight to his offices and picked him up.

In February 2006, Yahoo! General Counsel submitted a statement to the U.S. Congress in which Yahoo! denied knowing the true nature of the case against Shi Tao.[88] In April 2006, Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) was investigated by Hong Kong's Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data.

On 2 June 2006, the union representing journalists in the UK and Ireland (National Union of Journalists) called on its 40,000 members to boycott all Yahoo! Inc. products and services to protest the Internet company's reported actions in China.[89]

In July 2007, evidence surfaced detailing the warrant which the Chinese authorities sent to Yahoo! officials, highlighting "State Secrets" as the charge against Shi Tao. The warrant requests "Email account registration information for huoyan1989@yahoo.com.cn, all login times, corresponding IP addresses, and relevant email content from February 22, 2004 to present."[90][91][92] Analyst reports and human rights organizations have said that this evidence directly contradicts Yahoo!'s testimony before the U.S. Congress in February 2006.[93]

Yahoo! contends it must respect the laws of governments in jurisdictions where it is operating.
[edit] Li Zhi
Main article: Li Zhi (dissident)

Criticism of Yahoo! intensified in February 2006 when Reporters Without Borders released Chinese court documents stating that Yahoo! aided Chinese authorities in the case of dissident Li Zhi. In December 2003 Li Zhi was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment for "inciting subversion".
[edit] Sued in US court for outing Chinese dissident Wang Xiaoning
Main article: Wang Xiaoning

Wang Xiaoning is a Chinese dissident from Shenyang who was arrested by authorities of the People's Republic of China for publishing controversial material online.

In 2000 and 2001, Wang, who was an engineer by profession, posted electronic journals in a Yahoo! group calling for democratic reform and an end to single-party rule. He was arrested in September 2002 after Yahoo! assisted Chinese authorities by providing information. In September 2003, Wang was convicted of charges of "incitement to subvert state power" and sentenced to ten years in prison.[94]

On April 18, 2007, Xiaoning's wife Yu Ling sued Yahoo! under human rights laws in federal court in San Francisco, California, United States.[95] Wang Xiaoning is named as a plaintiff in the Yahoo! suit, which was filed with help from the World Organization for Human Rights USA. "Yahoo! is guilty of 'an act of corporate irresponsibility,'" said Morton Sklar, executive director of the group. "Yahoo! had reason to know that if they provided China with identification information that those individuals would be arrested."[96]

Yahoo!'s decision to assist China's authoritarian government came as part of a policy of reconciling its services with the Chinese government's policies. This came after China blocked Yahoo! services for a time. As reported in The Washington Post and many media sources:

The suit says that in 2001, Wang was using a Yahoo! e-mail account to post anonymous writings to an Internet mailing list. The suit alleges that Yahoo!, under pressure from the Chinese government, blocked that account. Wang set up a new account via Yahoo! and began sending material again; the suit alleges that Yahoo! gave the government information that allowed it to identify and arrest Wang in September 2002. The suit says prosecutors in the Chinese courts cited Yahoo!'s cooperation.[96]

Human rights organizations groups are basing their case on a 217-year-old U.S. law to punish corporations for human rights violations abroad, an effort the Bush administration has opposed:

In recent years, activists working with overseas plaintiffs have sued roughly two dozen businesses under the Alien Tort Statute, which the activists say grants jurisdiction to American courts over acts abroad that violate international norms. Written by the Founding Fathers in 1789 for a different purpose, the law was rarely invoked until the 1980s.[96]

On August 28, 2007, the World Organization for Human Rights sued Yahoo! for allegedly passing information (email and IP address) with the Chinese government that caused the arrests of writers and dissidents. The lawsuit was filed in San Francisco for journalists, Shi Tao, and Wang Xiaoning. Yahoo! stated that it supported privacy and free expression for it worked with other technology companies to solve human rights concerns.[97]

On November 6, 2007, the US congressional panel criticized Yahoo! for not giving full details to the House Foreign Affairs Committee the previous year, stating it had been "at best inexcusably negligent" and at worst "deceptive".[98]
[edit] Chatrooms and message boards

As a result of media scrutiny relating to Internet child predators and a lack of significant ad revenues, Yahoo!'s "user created" chatrooms were closed down in June 2005.[99] Yahoo! News' message board section was closed December 19, 2006, due to the trolling phenomenon.[100]

In 2009, it was discovered that Yahoo!'s message boards were prone to a vulnerability that allowed board participants to execute JavaScript on reader's computers as they searched the boards. Using this cross-site scripting bug, one could also grab a user's Yahoo! cookie, which could then be used to impersonate them online, even without their Yahoo! password. Yahoo! fixed the vulnerability in September 2009.[101]
[edit] Image search

On May 25, 2006, Yahoo!'s image search was criticized for bringing up sexually explicit images even when SafeSearch was on. This was discovered by a teacher who was intending to use the service with a class to search for "www". Yahoo!'s response to this was, "Yahoo! is aware of this issue and is working to resolve it as quickly as possible".[102]
[edit] Shark finning controversy

Yahoo! is a 40% owner of Alibaba, which facilitates the sale of shark-derived products.[103] After investing in Alibaba, Yahoo! executives were asked about this issue, and responded: "We know the sale of shark products is both legal in Asia and a centuries-old tradition. This issue is largely a cultural-practices one."[104] However, the "cultural" claim (which is pushed by the trade, as in this article about Disney continuing to offer shark's fin soup)[105] has been contested.[106] As a minority-owner of Alibaba, Yahoo! is not able to directly control that company's actions in China.
[edit] Closing Down Services
[edit] Closing down Geocities

Geocities was a popular web hosting service founded in 1994. At one point it was the 3rd most-browsed site on the World Wide Web.[107] Yahoo! purchased Geocities in 1999. Ten years later Yahoo! closed Geocities,[108] deleting millions of web pages in the process. A great deal of information was certainly lost but many of those sites & pages have been mirrored at the Internet Archive[109], "OOcities.com", and more.[110]
[edit] Closing down Yahoo! 360° beta

Yahoo! 360° was a popular blogging/social networking beta service launched in March 2005 by Yahoo!. On July 13, 2009 Yahoo closed it down.[111]
[edit] Closing Down Mash Beta

Yahoo! Mash beta was another social service closed after one year of operation. It never left Beta .[112]
[edit] Closing Down Yahoo Photos

Yahoo! Photos was shut down on September 20, 2007 in favor of Flickr
[edit] Closing down Yahoo! Tech

Yahoo! Tech is a web site that provides product information and setup advice to users. Yahoo! launched the web site in May 2006. On February 11, 2010 Yahoo announced that it will close down Yahoo! Tech on 11 March. The site thereafter will redirect users to Yahoo!'s technology news section.[113]
[edit] Other discontinued services

Other discontinued services include Farechase, My Web, Audio Search, Pets, Live, Kickstart, Briefcase, and Yahoo! for Teachers.[114] For Complete list of closed services see: List of other Yahoo! closed and defunct services
[edit] Yahoo subject of cyber attacks originating in China

Adobe and Yahoo appear to have been among the targets of cyber attacks originating in China that prompted Google Inc. to threaten to leave the Asian nation in a surprise announcement on January 12, 2010.[115]
[edit] Financial data
Financial data, US$ million[116] Year 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Sales 1 625 3 574 5 258 6 426 6 969
EBITDA 453 1 000 1 505 1 066
Net Results 238 840 1 896 751 660
Staff 5 500 7 600 9 800 11 400
[edit] Yahoo! International

Yahoo! is known across the world with its multi-lingual interface. The site is available in over 20 languages, including English. The official directory for all of the Yahoo! International sites is world.yahoo.com.

Each of the international sites are wholly-owned by Yahoo!, with the exception of Yahoo! Japan, in which it holds a 34.79% minority stake [1] and Yahoo!7 in Australia which is a 50-50 agreement between Yahoo! and The Seven Network. Historically, Yahoo! entered into joint venture agreements with Softbank for the major European sites (UK, France, Germany) and well as Korea and Japan. In November 2005, Yahoo! purchased the minority interests that Softbank owned in Europe and Korea.

Yahoo! holds a 40% stake in Alibaba, which manages a web portal in China using the Yahoo! brand name. Yahoo! in the USA does not have direct control over the operations of Alibaba, which operates as a completely independent company.

In 2008, Darren Petterson, business development director for Yahoo! Europe confirmed that Yahoo! was going to launch a Romanian version of their website by the end of the year,[117][118] however, due to the financial crisis at that time, those plans were frozen.[119] In February 2010, new reports appeared in the Romanian media claiming that the portal will finally launch by June the same year, as some services like Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Mobile are already translated into Romanian.[120][121]
[edit] Logos and themes

The first logo was used when the company was founded in 1995. It was red and had three icons on each side.[122]

The logo used on the main page yahoo.com used to be red with a black outline and shadow, but in May 2009, along with a new theme redesign, the logo was changed to purple with no outline or shadow.

Sometimes, the logo is abbreviated with Y!.[123]

Themes and page designs are different on some international Yahoo! home pages, such as Yahoo! Australia.

Yahoo! adalah sebuah portal web populer yang dioperasikan perusahaan yang bernama Yahoo! Inc. yang dirintis oleh oleh David Filo dan Jerry Yang. Yahoo! pada awalnya hanyalah semacam bookmark (petunjuk halaman buku), ide itu berawal pada bulan April 1994, saat itu dua orang alumni Universitas Stanford mendapat liburan ketika profesor mereka pergi ke luar kota karena cuti besar.

Dua mahasiswa teknik tersebut mempunyai sedikit pekerjaan yang harus dilakukan selain menjelajah internet. Mereka tidak membutuhkan waktu lama untuk mengkompilasi sebuah daftar bookmark yang besar, yang dikelompokkan berdasarkan subyek.

Kemudian mereka berpikir untuk memasukannya di web, dan mulai bekerja membuat sebuah program database untuk menanganinya sehingga dapat memberikan hasil secara online.

Koleksi bookmark tersebut, sekarang dikenal sebagai Yahoo!, menerima sejumlah 80 juta pengunjung setiap bulan (sensus tahun 2000).

Yahoo! paid inclusion controversy

In March 2004, Yahoo! launched a paid inclusion program whereby commercial websites are guaranteed listings on the Yahoo! search engine after payment.[1] This scheme is lucrative, but has proved unpopular both with website marketers (who are reluctant to pay), and the public (who are unhappy about the paid-for listings being indistinguishable from other search results).[2] As of October 2006, Paid Inclusion doesn't guarantee any commercial listing, it only helps the paid inclusion customers, by crawling their site more often and by providing some statistics on the searches that led to the page and some additional smart links (provided by customers as feeds) below the actual url.
[edit] Adware and spyware

Yahoo! has also been criticized for funding spyware and adware — advertising from Yahoo!’s clients often appears on-screen in pop-ups generated from adware that a user may have installed on their computer without realizing it by accepting online offers to download software to fix computer clocks or improve computer security, add browser enhancements, etc. The frequency of advertising pop-ups for spyware, generated from a partnership with advertising distributor Walnut Ventures, who had a direct partnership with Direct Revenue, could be increased or decreased based on Yahoo!’s immediate revenue needs, according to some former employees in Yahoo!’s sales department.[3][4]
[edit] Work in the People's Republic of China
“ While technologically and financially you [Yahoo] are giants, morally you are pygmies ”

—Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (2007)[5]

Yahoo!, along with Google China, Microsoft, Cisco, AOL, Skype, Nortel and others, has cooperated with the Chinese Communist Government in implementing a system of internet censorship in mainland China.

Unlike Google or Microsoft, which keep confidential records of its users outside mainland China, Yahoo! stated that the company will not protect the privacy and confidentiality of its mainland Chinese customers from the authorities.[6]

Critics say that the companies put profits before principles.[7] Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders state that it is "ironic that companies whose existence depends on freedom of information and expression have taken on the role of censor."[8]
[edit] Outing of Chinese dissidents
[edit] Shi Tao
Main article: Shi Tao

In September 2005, Reporters Without Borders reported the following story. In April 2005, Shi Tao, a journalist working for a Chinese newspaper, was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Changsha Intermediate People's Court of Hunan Province, China (First trial case no. 29), for "providing state secrets to foreign entities". The "secrets" were a brief list of censorship orders he sent from a Yahoo! Mail account to the Asia Democracy Forum before the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Incident.[9]

The verdict as published by the Chinese government stated the following. Shi Tao had sent the email through an anonymous Yahoo! account. Yahoo! Holdings (the Hong Kong subsidiary of Yahoo) told the Chinese government that the IP address used to send the email was registered by the Hunan newspaper that Shi Tao worked for. Police went straight to his offices and picked him up.

In February 2006, Yahoo! General Counsel submitted a statement to the U.S. Congress in which Yahoo! denied knowing the true nature of the case against Shi Tao.[10] In April 2006, Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) was investigated by Hong Kong's Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data.

On 2 June 2006, the union representing journalists in the UK and Ireland (NUJ) called on its 40,000 members to boycott all Yahoo! Inc. products and services to protest the Internet company's reported actions in China.[11]
“ It's complicated.[5] ”

—Michael Callaham, General Counsel, Yahoo!, testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee (2007)

In July 2007, evidence surfaced detailing the warrant which the Chinese authorities sent to Yahoo! officials, highlighting "State Secrets" as the charge against Shi Tao. The warrant requests "Email account registration information for huoyan1989@yahoo.com.cn, all login times, corresponding IP addresses, and relevant email content from February 22, 2004 to present."[12][13][14] Analyst reports and human rights organizations have said that this evidence directly contradicts Yahoo!’s testimony before the U.S. Congress in February 2006.[15]

Yahoo! contends it must respect the laws of governments in jurisdictions where it is operating.
[edit] Li Zhi
Main article: Li Zhi (dissident)

Criticism of Yahoo! intensified in February 2006 when Reporters Without Borders released Chinese court documents stating that Yahoo! aided Chinese authorities in the case of dissident Li Zhi. In December 2003 Li Zhi was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment for "inciting subversion".
[edit] Wang Xiaoning
Main article: Wang Xiaoning

Wang Xiaoning is a Chinese dissident from Shenyang who was arrested by authorities of the People's Republic of China for publishing controversial material online.

In 2000 and 2001, Wang, who was an engineer by profession, posted electronic journals in a Yahoo! group calling for democratic reform and an end to single-party rule. He was arrested in September 2002 after Yahoo! assisted Chinese authorities by providing information. In September 2003, Wang was convicted of charges of "incitement to subvert state power" and sentenced to ten years in prison.[16]

On April 18, 2007, Xiaoning's wife Yu Ling sued Yahoo! under human rights laws in federal court in San Francisco, California, United States.[17] Wang Xiaoning is named as a plaintiff in the Yahoo! suit, which was filed with help from the World Organization for Human Rights USA. "Yahoo! is guilty of 'an act of corporate irresponsibility,' said Morton Sklar, executive director of the group. "Yahoo! had reason to know that if they provided China with identification information that those individuals would be arrested."[18]

Yahoo!’s decision to assist China's authoritarian government came as part of a policy of reconciling its services with the Chinese government's policies. This came after China blocked Yahoo! services for a time. As reported in The Washington Post and many media sources:

The suit says that in 2001, Wang was using a Yahoo! e-mail account to post anonymous writings to an Internet mailing list. The suit alleges that Yahoo!, under pressure from the Chinese government, blocked that account. Wang set up a new account via Yahoo! and began sending material again; the suit alleges that Yahoo! gave the government information that allowed it to identify and arrest Wang in September 2002. The suit says prosecutors in the Chinese courts cited Yahoo!’s cooperation.[18]

Human rights organizations groups are basing their case on a 217-year-old U.S. law to punish corporations for human rights violations abroad, an effort the Bush administration has opposed:

In recent years, activists working with overseas plaintiffs have sued roughly two dozen businesses under the Alien Tort Claims Act, which the activists say grants jurisdiction to American courts over acts abroad that violate international norms. Written by the Founding Fathers in 1789 for a different purpose, the law was rarely invoked until the 1980s.[18]

On August 28, 2007, the World Organization for Human Rights sued Yahoo! for allegedly passing information (email and IP address) with the Chinese government that caused the arrests of writers and dissidents. The lawsuit was filed in San Francisco for journalists, Shi Tao, and Wang Xiaoning. Yahoo! stated that it supported privacy and free expression for it worked with other technology companies to solve human rights concerns.[19]

On November 6, 2007, the US congressional panel criticised Yahoo! for not giving full details to the House Foreign Affairs Committee the previous year, stating it had been "at best inexcusably negligent" and at worst "deceptive".[20]
[edit] User-Created Chatrooms, message boards, and Profiles

As a result of media scrutiny relating to Internet child predators and a lack of significant ad revenues, Yahoo!’s "user created" chatrooms were closed down in June 2005.[21] Yahoo! News' message board section was closed December 19, 2006, due to the trolling phenomenon.[22] In addition, in mid-October, 2008, Yahoo! deleted all information in millions of user profiles with no advance notice and little explanation.[23]
[edit] Image search

On May 25, 2006, Yahoo!’s image search was criticized for bringing up sexually explicit images even when SafeSearch was on. This was discovered by a teacher who was intending to use the service with a class to search for "www". Yahoo!'s response to this was, "Yahoo! is aware of this issue and is working to resolve it as quickly as possible".[24]
[edit] Shark's fin controversy

Yahoo! is a 40% owner of Alibaba, which facilitates the sale of shark-derived products.[25] After investing in Alibaba, Yahoo! executives were asked about this issue, and responded: "We know the sale of shark products is both legal in Asia and a centuries-old tradition. This issue is largely a cultural-practices one."[26]
[edit] Closing down Geocities

Geocities was a popular web hosting service founded in 1994. At one point it was the 3rd most-browsed site on the World Wide Web.[27] Yahoo purchased Geocities in 1999. Ten years later Yahoo closed Geocities[28], deleting millions of web pages in the process.[29] In September 2009, a month before it was closed by Yahoo, Geocities received 10,477,049 unique visitors.[30]

List of acquisitions by Yahoo!
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, United States

Yahoo! is a computer software and web search engine company founded on March 1, 1995.[1] The company is a public corporation and its headquarters is located in Sunnyvale, California.[2] It was founded by Stanford University graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo in 1994.[3] According to web traffic analysis companies, Yahoo! has been one of the most visited websites on the Internet, with more than 130 million unique users per month in the United States alone.[4][5][6] As of October 2007, the global network of Yahoo! receives 3.4 billion page views per day on average, making it one of the most visited US websites.[5]

Yahoo!'s first acquisition was the purchase of Net Controls, a web search engine company, in September 1997 for US$1.4 million. As of April 2008, the company's largest acquisition is the purchase of Broadcast.com, an Internet radio company, for $5.7 billion, making Broadcast.com co-founder Mark Cuban a billionaire. Most of the companies acquired by Yahoo! are based in the United States; 47 of the companies are from the United States, and 8 are based in a foreign country. As of October 2009, Yahoo! has acquired 58 companies.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Acquisitions
* 2 References


[edit] Acquisitions
Acquisition date↓ Company↓ Business↓ Country↓ Value (USD)↓ Derived products↓ References
01997-09 September 1997 Net Controls Web search engine USA $&0000000001400000.0000001,400,000 Yahoo! Search [7]
01997-10-08 October 8, 1997 Four11 Web-based email USA $&0000000092000000.00000092,000,000 Yahoo! Mail [8]
01998-03-31 March 31, 1998 Classic Games Online game USA — Yahoo! Games [9]
01998-04-29 April 29, 1998 Sportasy Fantasy sport USA — Yahoo! Fantasy Sports [10]
01998-06-08 June 8, 1998 Viaweb Web application USA $&0000000049000000.00000049,000,000 Yahoo! Store [11]
01998-07-17 July 17, 1998 Webcal Calendaring software USA $&0000000021000000.00000021,000,000 Yahoo Calendar [12]
01998-10-12 October 12, 1998 Yoyodyne Direct marketing USA $&0000000029600000.00000029,600,000 Yahoo! Search Marketing [13]
01998-12 December 1998 Hyperparallel Data analysis USA $&0000000008000000.0000008,000,000 Yahoo! Search [14]
01999-01-15 January 15, 1999 LogMeIn Digital identity USA $&0000000010000000.00000010,000,000 Yahoo! [15]
01999-04-01 April 1, 1999 Broadcast.com Internet radio USA $&0000005700000000.0000005,700,000,000 LAUNCHcast [16]
01999-05-27 May 27, 1999 Encompass Internet service provider USA $&0000000130000000.000000130,000,000 Yahoo! [17]
01999-05-28 May 28, 1999 GeoCities Web hosting service USA $&0000003600000000.0000003,600,000,000 Yahoo! GeoCities [18]
01999-06-02 June 2, 1999 Online Anywhere Content delivery network USA $&0000000080000000.00000080,000,000 Yahoo! TV [19]
02000-03-23 March 23, 2000 Arthas.com E-commerce payment systems USA — Yahoo! Store [20]
02000-04-05 April 5, 2000 MyQuest Internet service provider USA — Yahoo! [21]
02000-08-31 August 31, 2000 eGroups Electronic mailing list USA $&0000000432000000.000000432,000,000 Yahoo! Groups [22]
02000-11-09 November 9, 2000 Kimo Web portal TWN $&0000000145000000.000000145,000,000 Yahoo! [23]
02001-02-14 February 14, 2001 Sold.com Online auction tools AUS $&0000000030000000.00000030,000,000 Yahoo! Shopping [24]
02001-06-28 June 28, 2001 LAUNCH Media Online music store USA $&0000000012000000.00000012,000,000 Yahoo! Music [25]
02002-01-11 January 11, 2002 Hotjobs.com Job search engine USA $&0000000436000000.000000436,000,000 Yahoo! HotJobs [26]
02002-12-23 December 23, 2002 Inktomi Corporation Internet service provider USA $&0000000235000000.000000235,000,000 Yahoo! Search [27]
02003-06-14 June 14, 2003 Overture Services, Inc. Search engine marketing USA $&0000001630000000.0000001,630,000,000 Yahoo! Search Marketing [28]
02004-01 January 2004 3721 Internet Assistant Browser Helper Object CHN $&0000000120000000.000000120,000,000 Yahoo! Assistant [29]
02004-03-26 March 26, 2004 Kelkoo Price comparison service FRA $&0000000579000000.000000579,000,000 Kelkoo [30]
02004-07-12 July 12, 2004 Oddpost Web-based email USA $&0000000030000000.00000030,000,000 Yahoo! Mail [31]
02004-09-14 September 14, 2004 Musicmatch Jukebox Audio player USA $&0000000160000000.000000160,000,000 Yahoo! Music [32]
02004-10-02 October 2, 2004 The All-Seeing Eye Game server browser FIN — Yahoo! Games [33]
02004-10-22 October 22, 2004 Stata Labs Web-based email USA — Yahoo! Mail [34]
02004-12-07 December 7, 2004 WUF Networks Mobile media USA — Yahoo! Mobile [35]
02005-02-11 February 11, 2005 Verdisoft Computer software USA $&0000000058000000.00000058,000,000 Yahoo! Mobile [36]
02005-03-04 March 4, 2005 Stadeon Online game USA — Yahoo! Games [37]
02005-03-20 March 20, 2005 Ludicorp Image hosting service CAN $&0000000040000000.00000040,000,000[citation needed] Flickr [38]
02005-04-12 April 12, 2005 TeRespondo Advertising network BRA — Yahoo! Search Marketing [39]
02005-06-14 June 14, 2005 Dialpad Voice over Internet Protocol USA — Yahoo! Voice [40]
02005-06-14 June 14, 2005 blo.gs Weblog software USA — Yahoo! 360° [41]
02005-07-25 July 25, 2005 Konfabulator Widget engine USA — Yahoo! Widgets [42]
02005-10-04 October 4, 2005 Upcoming.org Calendaring software USA — Yahoo! Local [43]
02005-10-18 October 18, 2005 Whereonearth Web mapping USA — Yahoo! Maps [44]
02005-12-12 December 12, 2005 del.icio.us Social bookmarking USA $&0000000020000000.00000020,000,000 del.icio.us [45]
02006-01-09 January 9, 2006 Webjay Online music store USA — Yahoo! Music [46]
02006-01-17 January 17, 2006 SearchFox Web search engine USA — Yahoo! Search [47]
02006-04-18 April 18, 2006 Meedio Digital video recorder USA — Yahoo! Go [48]
02006-09-27 September 27, 2006 Jumpcut.com Online video editing USA — Yahoo! Video [49]
02006-10-17 October 17, 2006 AdInterax Online advertising USA — Yahoo! Search Marketing [50]
02006-11-16 November 16, 2006 Bix.com Social media USA — Bix [51]
02006-11-17 November 17, 2006 Kenet Works Mobile software SWE $&0000000025000000.00000025,000,000 Yahoo! Mobile [52]
02006-12 December 2006 Wretch Virtual community TWN $&0000000022000000.00000022,000,000 Wretch [53]
02007-01-08 January 8, 2007 MyBlogLog Social network service USA — MyBlogLog [54]
02007-04-29 April 29, 2007 Right Media Online advertising USA $&0000000680000000.000000680,000,000 Yahoo! Search Marketing [55]
02007-06-20 June 20, 2007 Rivals.com College sports USA — Yahoo! Sports [56]
02007-09-04 September 4, 2007 BlueLithium Advertising network USA $&0000000300000000.000000300,000,000 Yahoo! Search Marketing [57]
02007-09-14 September 14, 2007 BuzzTracker News site USA — Yahoo! News [58]
02007-09-17 September 17, 2007 Zimbra Collaborative software USA $&0000000350000000.000000350,000,000 Zimbra [59]
02008-02-05 February 5, 2008 FoxyTunes Browser extension USA — FoxyTunes [60]
02008-02-12 February 12, 2008 Maven Networks Video on demand USA $&0000000160000000.000000160,000,000 Yahoo! Video [61]
02008-05-09 May 9, 2008 Inquisitor Browser extension USA — Inquisitor [62]
02009-07-22 July 22, 2009 Xoopit Webmail applications USA $&0000000020000000.00000020,000,000 Yahoo! Mail [63]
02009-08-25 August 25, 2009 Maktoob.com Social media Dubai — Maktoob.com [64]
02010-03-17 March 17, 2010 citizensports.com Sports Social media USA — citizensports.com [65]

This is a list of Wikipedia articles about search engines, including web search engines, selection-based search engines, metasearch engines, desktop search tools, and web portals and vertical market websites that have a search facility for online databases.

By content/topic
General

* Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves)
* Baidu (Chinese,Japanese)
* Bing (formerly MSN Search and Live Search)
* Cuil
* Duck Duck Go
* Google
* Kosmix
* Sogou (Chinese)
* Yodao (Chinese)
* Yahoo! Search
* Yandex (Russian)
* Yebol

Geographical limited scope

* Accoona, China/US
* Alleba, Philippines
* Ansearch, Australia/US/UK/NZ
* Daum, Korea
* Goo, Japan
* Guruji.com, India
* Leit.is, Iceland
* Maktoob, Arab World
* Onkosh, Arab World
* Miner.hu, Hungary
* Najdi.si, Slovenia
* Naver, Korea
* Rambler, Russia
* Rediff, India
* SAPO, Portugal/Angola/Cabo Verde/Mozambique
* Search.ch, Switzerland
* Sesam, Norway, Sweden
* Seznam, Czech Republic
* Walla!, Israel
* Yandex, Russia
* ZipLocal, Canada/US

Accountancy

* IFACnet

Business

* Business.com
* GlobalSpec
* Nexis (Lexis Nexis)
* Thomasnet (United States)
* GenieKnows (United States and Canada)

Education

* GetEducated.com (Online degree programs from the US)

Enterprise
See also: Enterprise search

* AskMeNow: S3 - Semantic Search Solution
* Concept Searching Limited: concept search products
* Dieselpoint: Search & Navigation
* dtSearch: dtSearch Engine(SDK), dtSearch Web
* Endeca: Information Access Platform
* Exalead: exalead one:enterprise
* Expert System S.p.A.: Cogito
* Fast Search & Transfer: Enterprise Search Platform (ESP), RetrievalWare (formerly Convera)
* Funnelback: Funnelback Search
* IBM: OmniFind Enterprise Edition
* ISYS Search Software: ISYS:web, ISYS:sdk
* Jumper 2.0: Universal search powered by Enterprise bookmarking
* Microsoft: SharePoint Search Services
* Northern Light
* Open Text: Hummingbird Search Server, Livelink Search
* Oracle Corporation: Secure Enterprise Search 10g
* SAP: TREX
* TeraText: TeraText Suite
* Vivisimo: Vivisimo Clustering Engine
* X1 Technologies : X1 Enterprise Search
* ZyLAB Technologies: ZyIMAGE Information Access Platform

Mobile/Handheld

* Taptu: taptu mobile/social search

Job
Main articles: Job search engine and Employment website
See also: Category:Job search engines

* Bixee.com (India)
* CareerBuilder.com (USA)
* Craigslist (by city)
* Dice.com (USA)
* Eluta.ca (Canada)
* Hotjobs.com (USA)
* Incruit (Korea)
* Indeed.com (USA)
* LinkUp.com (USA)
* Monster.com (USA), (India)
* Naukri.com (India)

Legal

* WestLaw
* Lexis (Lexis Nexis)
* Quicklaw
* Manupatra

Medical

* Bioinformatic Harvester
* Entrez (includes Pubmed)
* EB-eye EMBL-EBI's Search engine
* GenieKnows
* GoPubMed (knowledge-based: GO - GeneOntology and MeSH - Medical Subject Headings)
* Healia
* Searchmedica
* WebMD
* PubGene
* Nextbio (Life Science Search Engine)
* VADLO (Life Sciences Search Engine)

News

* Google News
* Daylife
* MagPortal
* Newslookup
* Nexis (Lexis Nexis)
* Topix.net
* Yahoo! News

People

* PeekYou
* Ex.plode.us
* InfoSpace
* Spock
* Spokeo
* Wink
* Zabasearch.com
* ZoomInfo

Real property

* Fizber.com
* Home.co.uk
* HotPads.com
* Rightmove
* Zillow.com

Television

* TV Genius

Video Games

* Wazap (Japan)

By information type

Search engines dedicated to a specific kind of information
Forum

* Omgili

Blog

* Amatomu
* Bloglines
* BlogScope
* IceRocket
* Sphere
* Technorati

Multimedia
See also: Multimedia search

* Bing Videos
* blinkx
* FindSounds
* Google Video
* Munax's PlayAudioVideo
* Picsearch
* Pixsta
* Podscope
* ScienceStage
* Songza
* SeeqPod
* Veveo
* TinEye
* Yahoo! Video
* YouTube

Source code

* Google Code Search
* JExamples
* Koders
* Krugle

BitTorrent

These search engines work across the BitTorrent protocol.

* Btjunkie
* FlixFlux
* Isohunt
* Mininova
* The Pirate Bay
* TorrentSpy
* Torrentz

Email

* TEK

Maps

* Wiki Mapia
* Bing Maps
* Géoportail
* Google Maps
* MapQuest
* Yahoo! Maps

Price

* Google Product Search (formerly Froogle)
* Kelkoo
* MSN Shopping
* MySimon
* PriceGrabber
* PriceRunner
* PriceSCAN
* Shopping.com
* ShopWiki
* Shopzilla (also operates Bizrate)
* TheFind.com
* Wishabi

Question and answer
Human answers

* Answers.com
* eHow
* Uclue
* Yahoo! Answers
* Stack Overflow
* DeeperWeb

Automatic answers
See also: Question answering

* AskMeNow
* BrainBoost
* True Knowledge
* Wolfram Alpha

Natural language
See also: Natural language search engine and Semantic search

* Ask.com
* Bing (Semantic ability is powered by Powerset)
* BrainBoost
* hakia
* Lexxe
* Powerset

By model
Open source search engines

* DataparkSearch
* Egothor
* Grub
* Ht://dig
* Isearch
* Lucene
* Lemur Toolkit & Indri Search Engine
* mnoGoSearch
* Namazu
* Nutch
* OpenFTS
* Sciencenet (for scientific knowledge, based on YaCy technology)
* Sphinx
* SWISH-E
* Terrier Search Engine
* Wikia Search
* Xapian
* YaCy
* Zettair

Semantic browsing engines

* Evri
* Hakia
* Yebol

Social search engines
See also: Social search, Relevance feedback, and Human search engine

* ChaCha Search
* Delver
* EarthFrisk.org
* Eurekster
* Mahalo.com
* OneRiot
* Rollyo
* Sproose
* Trexy
* Wikia search
* Wink provides web search by analyzing user contributions such as bookmarks and feedback

Metasearch engines
See also: Metasearch engine

* Brainboost
* ChunkIt!
* Clusty
* Dogpile
* Excite
* Harvester42
* HotBot
* Info.com
* Ixquick
* Kayak
* LeapFish
* Mamma
* Metacrawler
* MetaLib
* Mobissimo
* Myriad Search
* SideStep
* Turbo10
* WebCrawler
* DeeperWeb

Visual search engines

* ChunkIt!
* Grokker
* Pixsta
* PubGene
* Viewzi

Search Appliances

* Google: Google Search Appliance


Desktop search engines
See also: Desktop search
Name↓ Platform↓ Remarks↓ License↓
Autonomy Windows IDOL Enterprise Desktop Search. Proprietary, commercial
Beagle Linux Open source desktop search tool for Linux based on Lucene A mix of the X11/MIT License and the Apache License
Copernic Desktop Search Windows Considered best overall search engine in 2005 UW benchmark study.[1] Free for home use
Docco cross-platform (Java) Based on Apache's indexing and search engine Lucene, and it requires a Java Runtime Environment. BSD License [2]
Docfetcher Cross-platform Open source desktop search tool for Windows and Linux, based on Apache Lucene Eclipse Public License
dtSearch Desktop Windows Proprietary (30 day trial)
Easyfind Mac OS Freeware
Google Desktop Linux, Mac OS, Windows Integrates with the main Google search engine page. 5.9 Release now supports x64 systems. Freeware
GNOME Storage Linux Open Source desktop search tool for Unix/Linux GPL
imgSeek Linux, Mac OS, Windows Desktop content-based image search GPL v2 [3]
InSight Desktop Search Windows Metadata-based search utility Freeware
ISYS Search Software Windows ISYS:desktop search software. Proprietary (14 day trial)
Likasoft Archivarius 3000 Windows - Proprietary (30 day trial)
Meta Tracker Linux, Unix Open Source desktop search tool for Unix/Linux GPL v2 [4]
Recoll Linux, Unix Open Source desktop search tool for Unix/Linux GPL [5]
Spotlight Mac OS Found in Apple Mac OS X "Tiger" and later OS X releases. Proprietary
Strigi Linux, Unix, Solaris, Mac OS X and Windows Cross-platform open source desktop search engine LGPL v2 [6]
Terrier Search Engine Linux, Mac OS, Unix Desktop search for Windows, Mac OS X (Tiger), Unix/Linux. MPL
Tropes Zoom Windows Semantic Search Engine. Freeware and commercial
Windows Search Windows Part of Windows Vista and later OSs. Available as Windows Desktop Search for Windows XP and Server 2003. Does not support indexing UNC paths on x64 systems. Proprietary, freeware
X1 Professional Client Windows Formerly Yahoo Desktop Search, then X1 Desktop Search, then X1 Enterprise Client Proprietary (30 day trial)
Usenet

* Google Groups (formerly Deja News)


--

Timeline of events for Yahoo!
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

Timeline of major events for Yahoo!.

* January 1994: Jerry Yang and David Filo create "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" while studying at Stanford University.
* April 1994: "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" is renamed "Yahoo"
* March 1995: Yahoo is incorporated.
* 1995: Ziff Davis Inc. launches the magazine Yahoo! Internet Life, initially as ZD Internet Life. The magazine was meant to accompany and complement the website.
* April 12, 1996: Yahoo has Initial public offering, closing at $33.00, up 270% from the IPO price, after peaking at $43.00 for the day.
* October 8, 1997: Yahoo! acquires Four11, and Four11's Rocketmail service becomes Yahoo! Mail.
* June 8, 1998: Yahoo acquires Viaweb, co-founded by Paul Graham, which becomes Yahoo Store.
* October 12, 1998: Yahoo acquires direct marketing company Yoyodyne Entertainment, Inc.[1]
* January 28, 1999: Yahoo acquires Geocities.
* April 1, 1999: Yahoo acquires Broadcast.com.
* January 3, 2000: Yahoo stocks close at an all-time high of $475.00 (pre-split price) a share. The day before, it hit an intra-day high of $500.13 (pre-split price).
* January 19, 2000: At the height of the Dot-com tech bubble, shares in Yahoo Japan became the first stocks in Japanese history to trade at over ¥100,000,000, reaching a price of 101.4 million yen ($962,140 at that time).[2]
* February 7, 2000: Yahoo.com was brought to a halt for a few hours as it was the victim of a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS).[3][4] On the next day, its shares rose about $16, or 4.5 percent as the failure was blamed on hackers rather than on an internal glitch, unlike a fault with eBay earlier that year.
* May 22, 2000: A French judge LICRA_v._Yahoo ordered Yahoo to ban Nazi-related sites from its search engine, and to stop to act as an intermediary on bids for objects with racist overtones. Yahoo denied the French court's jurisdiction over a United States based company, and the tribunal's requests were finally abandoned in 2003. Yahoo eventually quit voluntarily trading on Nazi and Ku Klux Klan bibelots.[5][6]
* June 28, 2000: Yahoo acquires eGroups.
* March 7, 2001: Yahoo CEO Tim Koogle announces he will step down and remain only a company board member.
* April 17, 2001: Terry Semel announced as the new Yahoo CEO.
* September 26, 2001 Yahoo stocks close at an all-time low of $8.11. The day before, it hit an intra-day low of $8.02 (both figures are pre-split prices).
* October 2001: Yahoo! acquires Australian online auction site Sold.com from Fairfax Media for $30 million
* December 27, 2001: Yahoo acquires HotJobs.
* January 22, 2001: Yahoo! acquires Hotjobs for $436 million
* June 3, 2002: SBC and Yahoo Launch National Co-Branded Dial Service -- Press Release
* December 2002: Yahoo Inc. starts acquisition of Inktomi Web search engine
* July, 2003: BT Openworld announces an alliance with Yahoo -- Press Release
* July 2003, Yahoo acquires Overture Services, Inc.
* January 19, 2004: Yahoo Inc. announces the formation of Yahoo Research Labs, a research organization focusing on the invention of new technologies and solutions for Yahoo. Yahoo's Head and Principal Scientist, Dr. Gary William Flake, leads the new organization. Dr. Flake has since left the company and now works at Microsoft.
* February 19, 2004: Yahoo drops Google-powered results, launching its own web-crawling algorithm and using its own site index after it had used Google's results for a long time.
* March 2004: Yahoo launches its own search engine technology.
* March 1, 2004: Yahoo announces (as cited in the New York Times article listed in the "References" section) that it will practice paid inclusion for its search service. However, it also announced it would continue to rely mainly on a free web crawl for most of its search engine content.
* March 25, 2004: Yahoo acquires the European shopping search engine Kelkoo.
* July 9, 2004 Yahoo acquires email provider Oddpost.[7]
* November 4, 2004: Yahoo acquires game platform provider Stadeon.
* December 15, 2004: Yahoo launches beta version of its video search engine.
* February 9, 2005 Yahoo Launch is changed to Yahoo Music, which still provides free music.
* February 15, 2005 Yahoo establishes its European Headquarters in Dublin, Ireland with the creation of 400 new jobs.[8]
* February 28, 2005 Yahoo launches a developer network giving an API to most of its search verticals.
* March 2, 2005 Yahoo completes 10 years of corporate existence. To celebrate this, it gives free ice cream coupons at Baskin Robbins to its users.
* March 20, 2005 Yahoo acquires photo sharing service Flickr.
* March 29, 2005 Yahoo launch blogging and social networking service Yahoo! 360°
* April 7, 2005 Wikimedia Foundation announces Yahoo support.[9]
* May 26, 2005 Yahoo announces its new PhotoMail service
* June 14, 2005 Yahoo acquires VoIP provider DialPad Communications.
* July 15, 2005 Yahoo announces Yahoo! Research Berkeley
* July 25, 2005 Yahoo acquires widget engine Konfabulator
* August 11, 2005 Yahoo acquires 40% of Alibaba.com for $1 billion US, and Alibaba will take over operation of Yahoo China.[10]
* August 23, 2005: Verizon and Yahoo Launch Integrated DSL Service -- [11]
* September 7, 2005. Yahoo supplies information to People's Republic of China which then jails reporter Shi Tao, age 37, for 10 years. Yahoo states that they were following Chinese law.[12]
* October 4, 2005 Yahoo purchases online social event calendar Upcoming.org.[13]
* October 17, 2005 Yahoo buys British company Whereonearth Ltd which provides location technology.
* November 15, 2005 The sports section of My Yahoo is hacked; titles such as "selfhood + conscience" and "aesthetic freedom" link to various pages at doublereflection.org.
* December 1, 2005 - Tivo and Yahoo form a partnership where several Yahoo features can be viewed on television via the Series2 TiVO set top box. [3], [4]
* December 8/ (US time) 9, (Australian time) 2005 Yahoo!7 announced for January 2006. Official Site
* December 9, 2005 Yahoo acquires del.icio.us.
* January 9, 2006 Yahoo acquires webjay
* January 2006: Yahoo! announces 50:50 joint venture in Australia with the Seven Network, called Yahoo!7. Official Site
* February 12, 2006 Yahoo Developer Network PHP Center launched.
* May 1, 2006 Yahoo launches Yahoo Tech.
* August 31, 2006 Yahoo retires former frontpage.
* September 27, 2006 Yahoo acquires online video editing site Jumpcut.
* September 29 to September 30, 2006 Yahoo hosts an Open Hack Day (external site), featuring a musical performance by Beck
* December 5, 2006 Yahoo announces a significant re-organization, including the departure of Dan Rosensweig (COO), Lloyd Braun and John Marcom. Sue Decker is promoted from CFO, and other business unit shifts are made.
* December 13, 2006: Yahoo! announces Yahoo!Xtra, a joint venture in New Zealand between its Australian JV, Yahoo!7, and Telecom NZ.
* January 8, 2007 Yahoo acquires MyBlogLog.[14]
* February 5, 2007 Yahoo launches a new search advertising system Panama.[15]
* March 1, 2007 Localised New Zealand internet portal, Yahoo!Xtra, launches. Official Site
* March 2007: Yahoo! acquires Taiwan blogging site wretch.cc
* April 30, 2007 Yahoo! announces acquisition of Right Media.
* June 16, 2007 Yahoo! officially retires the Yahoo! Auctions service.[auctions.yahoo.com], except in some parts of Asia
* June 18, 2007 Yahoo! co-founder, Jerry Yang, replaces Terry Semel as CEO.[16]
* June 20, 2007 Yahoo! agrees to acquire Rivals.com. [17]
* June 28, 2007 Yahoo! UK/Ireland online auctions closes, Yahoo! referring instead to eBay.
* July 18, 2007 Yahoo acquires 35% stake in an Indian online ad company Tyroo Media Pvt ltd.
* August 20, 2007 Yahoo! had started to shutdown Yahoo! Photos due to the fact that Flickr is now a Yahoo property. Shutdown was completed on September 20, 2007.
* August 27, 2007 Yahoo adds SMS features (texting), IM to e-mail
* September 4, 2007 Yahoo announces acquisition of BlueLithium, a company founded by industry pioneer Gurbaksh Chahal
* February 1, 2008 Microsoft makes $44.6 Billion dollar bid for Yahoo![5]
* February 4, 2008 Yahoo! Acquires FoxyTunes [18]
* February 4, 2008 Yahoo! and Rhapsody Announce Strategic Partnership In Digital Music. [19]
* February 12, 2008 Yahoo! Acquires Maven Networks, Inc. [20]
* February 12, 2008 Yahoo! and T-Mobile Agree to Enter Into Strategic Partnership. [21]
* August 2008: Yahoo! acquires Taiwan ecommerce site Monday.com.tw
* November 17, 2008 Yahoo! co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang steps down as CEO just 18 months after he took over. [22]
* January 13, 2009 Carol Bartz joins Yahoo! as new CEO. [23]


--

The Yahoo! Messenger Protocol is the underlying network protocol used by the Yahoo! Messenger instant messaging client, for Yahoo!. Yahoo! Instant Messager supports many features beyond just messaging, including off-line messaging, file transfer, chat, conferencing, voice chat, webcams and avatars.

Overview

The purpose of the YMSG protocol is to provide a language and series of conventions for software communicating with Yahoo!'s Instant Messaging service. In essence YMSG performs the same role for IM as HTTP does for the World Wide Web. Unlike HTTP, however, YMSG is a proprietary standard, aligned only with a single messaging service provider (namely, Yahoo!). Rival messaging services have their own protocols, some based on open standards, others proprietary, each effectively fulfilling the same role with different mechanics.

One of the fundamental tenets of instant messaging is the notion that users can see when someone is connected to the network — known in the jargon as 'presence'. Yahoo!'s protocol uses the mechanics of a standard internet connection to achieve presence, the same connection it uses to send and receive data. In order for each user to remain 'visible' to other users on the service, signaling their availability, their Yahoo! IM client software must maintain a functional, open, network connection linking the client to Yahoo!'s IM servers.

As some organizations block communication on the port used by Yahoo! IM, either because they choose to whitelist certain types of internet usage (only web surfing and email, for example) or because they seek to blacklist instant messaging services, Yahoo! provides an alternative route for connecting to their service which mimics the HTTP protocol used by the World Wide Web. Unfortunately, as HTTP has no inherent sense of a persistent connection, Yahoo! instead relies on the client frequently contacting the server in order to approximate the sense of a connection required to give each user presence on the IM network.

Originally the YMSG login procedure suffered from a security flaw known as a replay attack, in which a given password (or other authentication information) is always identically scrambled when sent across the network. This allows any attacker who witnesses the transmission to merely reproduce the message verbatim in order to successfully log in, without actually needing to know the original password (or other details) which generated it. But some time around 2000 or 2001 Yahoo! upgraded its service to introduce a random element to each login attempt, defeating any further potential for replay attacks.

With the exception of the login authentication details, data sent over a YMSG connection is not encrypted. YMSG uses a binary format in which the text portions of the data are transmitted in plain view. Therefore, while it is difficult for an attacker to seize control of a Yahoo! IM account, it is quite easy for them to read all messages sent to and from the account holder, along with other details such as the list of friends, if the attacker has control of one of the computers through which the data is routed.
[edit] Technical Overview

The YMSG protocol communicates between the client application, and a server, using a TCP/IP connection on port 5050 by default. Other ports may be used if this port is blocked. Alternatively, an HTTP route is also available for clients behind a well secured firewall, with HTTP requests being used to upload messages from the client, while downloading all messages which have accumulated on the server since the last request.

The client remains logged in for as long as the TCP/IP connection is kept open. Or, in the case of a client connected via HTTP, until the client fails to send a request for some time ('ping' messages are sent every thirty seconds or so).

Messages consist of a twenty byte header, followed by a variable length table of key/value pairs, where the key is an ASCII representation of a numeric code representing the field type, and the value is its associated data. A two byte separator, the hexadecimal values c0 80, are used to delimit each entry in this table.

Some parts of YMSG rely on other protocols. For example, file transfer is initially negotiated using YMSG, but the actual transfer of the file is done via HTTP. Webcams too use YMSG to discover and request permission to view a webcam, but HTTP to actually feed JPEG 2000 images from one client to another. Chatroom categories, rooms and lobbies are retrieved using HTTP as XML documents. Regular webcam connections use H.323. Yahoo! with voice uses SIP. For calls, VoIP is handled indirectly by Yahoo! servers so the chat client doesn't have direct access to it.

The chatroom categories can be retrieved from here.
[edit] Login

The login process for YMSG is quite complex. First the client introduces itself with a message containing its username. The server responds with a rather long seed value. The client feeds this into a rather involved algorithm, along with the account's password, to produce two response values looking like variable assignments which are sent to the server. If these values match the server's expectations, the client is admitted and sent data associated with that account (such as buddy/friends lists).

Although the seed value looks like an equation, it is in reality little more than a series of instructions in which the operands control lookups into a series of in-built tables, and the operators determine which logic operation to perform. SHA1 is also used to create two message digest data arrays, which are then encoded using a table to resemble software variable assignments.
[edit]

--