Jerry Yang (entrepreneur)

Jerry Yang (simplified Chinese: 杨致远; traditional Chinese: 楊致遠; pinyin: Yáng Zhìyuǎn; born November 6, 1968) is a Chinese American .entrepreneur and the co-founder, former CEO, and (Chief Yahoo) of Yahoo! Inc.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Personal life 4 Philanthropy 5 Criticism 5.1 China 5.2 Microsoft 6 References 7 External links

 Early life

Born in Taipei, Taiwan on November 6, 1968, Yang moved to San Jose, California at the age of ten, with his mother and younger brother. His father died when Yang was two. He claimed that despite his mother being an English teacher, he only knew one English word (shoe) on his arrival. Becoming fluent in three years, he was placed into an AP English class.^[5]
Yang graduated from Sierramont Middle School, and Piedmont Hills High School, then went on to receive his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.

 Career

While he studied in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, he co-created in April 1994 with David Filo an Internet website consisting of a directory of other websites called "Jerry and Dave's Guide to the World Wide Web". It was renamed "Yahoo!" (an exclamation). Yahoo! became very popular, Yang and Filo realized the business potential and co-founded Yahoo! Inc. in April 1995.^[6] They took a leave of absence and postponed their doctoral programs indefinitely.
Yahoo! started off as a web portal with a web directory providing an extensive range of products and services for online activities. It is now one of the leading internet brands and, due to partnerships with telecommunications firms, has the most trafficked network on the internet.^{[citation needed]}
On November 17, 2008, The Wall Street Journal reported that Jerry Yang would step down as CEO as soon as the company found a replacement. He had been criticized by many investors, including Carl Icahn, for not increasing revenues and the Yahoo! stock price.^[7]
On January 13, 2009, Yahoo! named Silicon Valley veteran Carol Bartz as its new chief executive, effectively replacing Yang.^[8] Yang regained his former position as "Chief Yahoo" and remains on Yahoo's board of directors.^[9]

 Personal life

Yang is married to Akiko Yamazaki, who was raised in Costa Rica. She graduated from Stanford University with a degree in industrial engineering. The couple met at the Stanford University in Kyoto overseas program in 1992.
Yang is currently on the Board of Directors of Alibaba, the Asian Pacific Fund, Cisco, and Yahoo! Japan, and is also on the Stanford University Board of Trustees.^[10]

 Philanthropy

In February 2007, Jerry Yang and his wife gave USD $75 million to Stanford University, their alma mater, the bulk of which went to building the "Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building".^[11] The building, nicknamed Y2E2, was designed by Boora Architects of Portland, Oregon and constructed by Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Company of San Francisco, California. It is a multi-disciplinary research, teaching and lab building, the first to be realized on Stanford's new Science and Engineering Quad.

Criticism

China

Jerry Yang was criticized for a statement regarding the role of Yahoo! in the arrest of Chinese journalist Shi Tao by Chinese authorities.
While in China, Shi Tao used a Yahoo email address to notify a pro-democracy website that the Chinese government ordered the Chinese media not to cover the fifteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 on June 4. Yahoo! provided the Chinese security agencies with the IP addresses of the senders, the recipients and the time of the message. Tao was subsequently convicted for "divulging state secrets abroad." Yang was heavily criticized and Reporters Without Borders called Yahoo! "a Chinese police informant" whose actions led to the conviction of a journalist and writer.
Jerry Yang declared, "To be doing business in China, or anywhere else in the world, we have to comply with local law[s]." This was controversial, as critics claimed Yahoo! violated international law as well as a 1989 decision by the U.S. Congress to prohibit U.S. companies from selling "crime control and detection" equipment or software to the Chinese Government.^[12]
The New York Times reported that political prisoner Wang Xiaoning and other journalists had brought a civil suit against Yahoo for allegedly aiding and abetting the Chinese government which, it was claimed, resulted in torture that included beatings and imprisonment.^[13]
More recently Jerry Yang was summoned to Washington to answer for Yahoo's comments regarding its role in the arrests of Shi Tao and other journalists in China.^[14][15]
On November 14, 2007, Yahoo agreed to settle with affected Chinese dissidents, paying them undisclosed compensation. Yang stated, "After meeting with the families, it was clear to me what we had to do to make this right for them, for Yahoo, and for the future." In response, Democratic Congressman Tom Lantos, chairman of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, stated, "It took a tongue-lashing from Congress before these high-tech titans did the right thing and coughed up some concrete assistance for the family of a journalist whom Yahoo had helped send to jail. What a disgrace."^16]
Jerry Yang wrote a letter to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice requesting her assistance in freeing the jailed dissidents.^[17] In addition, Yang established the Yahoo! Human Rights Fund, a fund to provide "humanitarian and legal support" to online dissidents.^[18] One of the first public projects of the fund was financing the establishment of the Laogai Museum, a museum opened by noted Chinese dissident Harry Wu to showcase China's laogai penal system.^[19]
This change of heart has not been able to stop the chain of events that began with the arrest of jailed dissident Li Zhi, which resulted in another lawsuit being filed against Yahoo on behalf of Plaintiffs Zheng Cunzhu and Guo Quan who allege the loss of property and a garment business. The complaint alleges, "violation of international law including torture and prolonged detention, as well as unfair business practices, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment and assault."^[20]

 Microsoft

Yang was also criticized by shareholders for rejecting an offer of $33 a share from Microsoft in May 2008 - Microsoft subsequently walked away from the negotiations. In November 2008 the shares were valued at only $14 [4] and Google also decided not to proceed with commercial search advertising arrangements under negotiation influenced by the concerns voiced by the US authorities regarding the effect on competition in the market. On July 29, 2009, Yahoo! and Microsoft announced a search deal to compete against Google, after the Bing search of Microsoft was successfully launched earlier in June.

 References

1. ^ 10-Q Watch: Yahoo's Acquisitions; Yang Salary | paidContent.org
2. ^ Yahoo! Executives Compensation
3. ^ #773 Jerry Yang - Forbes.com
4. ^ Gerstein, Josh (2005-09-15). "Yahoo Flap in China May Be Harbinger". The New York Sun. http://www.nysun.com/business/yahoo-flap-in-china-may-be-harbinger/20120/. Retrieved 2009-06-04. : During an Internet conference last year, Mr. Yang was asked about Yahoo's business in China. He immediately mentioned his roots. "I'm a Chinese American, and I don't think that gives me a special privilege to say what I'm about to say," Mr. Yang began.
5. ^ Schlender, Brent (2000-03-06). "How A Virtuoso Plays The Web Eclectic, inquisitive, and academic, Yahoo's Jerry Yang reinvents the role of the entrepreneur.". Fortune. Cable News Network. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2000/03/06/275253/index.htm. Retrieved 2008-11-08. 
6. ^ Yahoo! Inc. - Company History
7. ^ Yang to Step Down as Yahoo CEO, The Wall Street Journal, November 18, 2008
8. ^ [1], BBC News, January 14, 2009
9. ^ Michael Liedtke (2008-11-18). "Yahoo! to Replace Yang as CEO". TheStreet.com. http://www.thestreet.com/story/10448487/yahoo-to-replace-yang-as-ceo.html. Retrieved 2009-09-11. 
10. ^ Yahoo! Inc. - Management Team; for the website of the Asian Pacific Fund, see: [2]
11. ^ http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/september10/hennessy-091008.html
12. ^ Xue Li: Human Rights Lawyer Questions Yahoo!'s Aid to China in Arresting a Journalist, Epoch Times, Sep 23, 2005
    Obeying Orders, Washington Post, September 18, 2005
13. ^ Chinese political prisoner sues in U.S. court, New York Times, April 18, 2007
    Chinese political
14. ^ Yahoo summoned to Washington over Chinese arrests, c/net news blog, Oct 16, 2007
    [3]
15. ^ Boudreau, John (2007-11-07). "Lawmaker scolds Yahoo: 'Morally you are pygmies'". Mercury News. http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_7392987?nclick_check=1. Retrieved 2007-11-14. 
16. ^ Kopytoff, Verne (2007-11-14). "Yahoo settles with jailed Chinese journalists". SFGate. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/14/BUN4TBJNV.DTL. Retrieved 2007-11-14. 
17. ^ "Rice presses China on jailed dissidents". International Herald Tribune. 2007-02-27. http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/27/business/yahoo.php. Retrieved 2007-02-27. 
18. ^ "Press Release: Yahoo! Inc Reaches Settlement On Lawsuit Works To Establish Human Rights Fund". Yahoo!. http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/PRESS/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=302980. Retrieved 12 December 2008. 
19. ^ Fowler, Geoffrey A (12 November 2008). "Yahoo-Sponsored Chinese Human Rights Museum Opens in Washington". The Wall Street Journal. http://blogs.wsj.com/chinajournal/2008/11/12/yahoo-sponsored-chinese-human-rights-museum-opens-in-washington/. Retrieved 12 December 2008. 
20. ^ Mills, Elinor (2007-02-27). "Yahoo sued by jailed dissidents again". CNET News. http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9881042-7.html?tag=newsmap. Retrieved 2007-02-27. 

 External links

• Jerry Yang's profile in Yahoo!
• Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki
• 1999 "Time Digital 50" snippet on Yang
• Stanford Jerry Yang and David Filo Bio
• Mark & Marc Interview
• MetroActive: A Couple of Yahoos
• IT Conversations audio interview from the Web 2.0 conference - 7 October 2004
• Jerry Yang, Yahoo and the Shi Tao case
• Yang's comment on the Shi Tao case
• Yahoo CEO paying the price for saying no to Microsoft

Yahoo! Teachers, Yahoo! Directory

Yahoo! Teachers

Yahoo! Teachers was a social networking service operated by Yahoo! made available in 2007. It enabled teachers to share lesson plans, curated web search results, the ability to share learning materials with parents' and students', maintain blogs, groups and lists, create and share lesson plans with other teachers' and create a public profile.
In addition, Yahoo! Teachers provided a way for teachers to easily align their lesson plans to their state educational standards. This service was never officially launched; Yahoo! prematurely stopped developing this service in March 2007.

 History

Yahoo! Teachers was developed as part of an internal Yahoo! Digital Youth & Education initiative designed to attract a younger demographic to the aging portal. In addition to attracting youth, one of the goals of the project was to incorporate social networking and other Yahoo! services (Flickr, Jumpcut, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Messenger into the education ecosystem. The service was built around the feedback of a teacher user community and enabled educators to create, modify and share standards-based curriculum.
One of the key features of Yahoo! Teachers was a web tool called "The Gobbler" which allowed users to grab snippets of text, video and images and use them in their lesson plans. The Gobbler tracked the attribution for the various media clips and annotated it at the bottom of the lesson plan.
The project was an internal start-up established with executive sponsorship and wasn't tied to a specific business unit at Yahoo! The project team first began working on the project in late 2005.
The Yahoo! Teachers project was publicly launched in March 2007 at the National Science Teachers Association conference held in St. Louis, Missouri.

 Yahoo! Teachers of Merit

In July 2006, Yahoo! invited a cadre of 100 teachers, media specialists, and librarians to come spend a week on the Yahoo! campus and talk about how teachers could leverage the technology and social media know-how at Yahoo! to support teachers in the classroom.
At the 10 day Yahoo! Teachers of Merit program teachers learned how to use all the latest Yahoo! services in an educational instruction: like image-sharing, effective and credible web searching, and making the most of online communities.
Participants were also given the opportunity to use the alpha version of Yahoo! Teachers (code named 'Hallpass') and provide feedback to Yahoo! on what features worked and didn't work for them in the classroom. After the participants left for the evening, a group of Yahoo! engineers (all volunteers) would take the feedback and write new code to incorporate the changes requested by the teachers. The engineering team also fixed the numerous software bugs that were reported during the previous day of the workshop.

 Yahoo! Teachers Tour

In the summer of 2007, Yahoo! Teachers Beta version was introduced to educators across the country at social media workshops held at various colleges around the United States. The workshops focused on teaching educators how to use various Yahoo! services in the classroom. The workshops also introduced the Yahoo! Teachers and Gobbler tools to educators and provided them with a day long, hands on experience with the service.
Yahoo! Teachers workshops were held at the University of San Diego, University of Chicago]], University of Texas at Austin, Yahoo! HQ in New York City and on the floor of the 2007 NECC Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. The workshops were directed and facilitated by members of the Yahoo! Teachers team, including: Karon Weber, Derek Baird and Bill Scott.

 Yahoo! Directory

The Yahoo! Directory is a web directory which rivals the Open Directory Project in size. The directory was Yahoo!'s first offering. When Yahoo! changed to crawler-based listings for its main results in October 2002, the human-edited directory's significance dropped, but it was still being updated in August 2010. The Yahoo! Directory offers two options for suggesting websites for possible listing: "Standard", which is free, and a paid submission process that offers expedited review. Payment is required when suggesting a commercial site.
Yahoo! provides both a search engine and a directory service, and the directory is searchable separately from the rest of their search engine results.
While Yahoo! has closed a number of country-specific directories, the company has stated that it currently "has no plans to close the main Yahoo! Directory" ^[3]

See also

• List of web directories

References

1. ^  How do I add my web site to the Yahoo! Directory?, Yahoo! website, accessed January 30, 2008
2. ^ Yahoo! Directory Submit, Yahoo! website, accessed January 30, 2008
3. ^ "Yahoo! Closes European Directories, Says US Directory Is Safe", SearchEngineLand.com, accessed August 13, 2010

External links

• Yahoo! Directory
• Yahoo! Crawler Search
• Yahoo! Directory - Help
• Yahoo! Directory Express

 

AltaVista, Yahoo! Live, Yahoo! Tech, Yahoo! Time Capsule.

AltaVista


 AltaVista is a web search engine owned by Yahoo!. AltaVista was once one of the most popular search engines but its popularity declined with the rise of Google.

Contents 1 Origins 2 Business transactions 3 Free services 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

Origins

AltaVista was created by researchers at Digital Equipment Corporation's Western Research Laboratory who were trying to provide services to make finding files on the public network easier. Although there is some dispute about who was responsible for the original idea, two key participants were Louis Monier, who wrote the crawler, and Michael Burrows, who wrote the indexer. The name AltaVista was chosen in relation to the surroundings of their company at Palo Alto. AltaVista was publicly launched as an internet search engine on 15 December 1995 at altavista.digital.com.
At launch, the service had two innovations which set it ahead of the other search engines; It used a fast, multi-threaded crawler (Scooter) which could cover many more Web pages than were believed to exist at the time and an efficient search running back-end on advanced hardware. As of 1998, it used 20 multi-processor machines using DEC's 64-bit Alpha processor. Together, the back-end machines had 130 GB of RAM and 500 GB of hard disk space, and received 13 million queries per day. This made AltaVista the first searchable, full-text database of a large part of the . The distinguishing feature of AltaVista was its minimalistic interface compared with other search engines of the time; a feature which was lost when it became a portal, but was regained when it refocused its efforts on its search function.
AltaVista's site was an immediate success. Traffic increased steadily from 300,000 hits on the first day to more than 80 million hits a day two years later. The ability to search the web, and AltaVista's service in particular, became the subject of numerous articles and even some books.^[1] AltaVista itself became one of the top destinations on the web, and by 1997 would earn US$50 million in sponsorship revenue.^[2]

Business transactions

In 1996, AltaVista became the exclusive provider of search results for Yahoo!. In 1998, Digital was sold to Compaq and in 1999, Compaq redesigned AltaVista as a web portal, hoping to compete with Yahoo!. Under CEO Rod Schrock, AltaVista abandoned its streamlined search page and focused on features like shopping and free email.^[6] In June 1998, Compaq paid AltaVista Technology Incorporated ("ATI") $3.3 million for the domain name altavista.com – Jack Marshall, cofounder of ATI, had registered the name in 1994.
In June 1999, Compaq sold a majority stake in AltaVista to CMGI, an internet investment company.^[7] CMGI filed for an initial public offering for AltaVista to take place in April 2000, but as the internet bubble collapsed, the IPO was cancelled.^[8] Meanwhile, it became clear that AltaVista's portal strategy was unsuccessful, and the search service began losing market share, especially to Google. After a series of layoffs and several management changes, AltaVista gradually shed its portal features and refocused on search. By 2002, AltaVista had improved the quality and freshness of its results and redesigned its user interface.^[9]
In February 2003, AltaVista was bought by Overture Services, Inc.^[10] In July 2003, Overture itself was taken over by Yahoo!.^[11]

Free services

AltaVista provides a free translation service, branded Babel Fish, which automatically translates text between several languages. In May 2008, this service was re-branded as a part of Yahoo!.

 Yahoo! Live

Yahoo! Live or Y! Live was a Yahoo! service that allowed users to broadcast videos in real time.^[1] The service was closed on December 3, 2008.^[2]

Contents 1 History 2 Features 3 References 4 External links

History

Yahoo! Live was launched on February 6, 2008 as a "limited preview" and in spite of Yahoo!'s rejection to Microsoft's offer just a few days earlier, the site crashed the same night it was launched due to lack of bandwidth.^[3]
On November 3, 2008, Yahoo! Live announced that the service would be ended on Dec. 3.
It was officially discontinued at 7:07 P.M. EST on Dec. 3 2008 with the message "kthxbai" posted on the main page.

Features

The design is similar to the one on Justin.tv. The chat system and video windows are as portable as with ustream.tv. Users can create a channel, authorize their webcam and start broadcasting to the public. Other people can watch, or choose to participate via video, sound or text chat; which can be disabled.^[5] Users can also set up profiles and track how many people have watched them stream live, how many broadcasts they have made, and how long they have been on the streaming. Unfortunately, videos are not archived for playback, once it’s broadcast, there is no way of recovering the video, and the is no other way of streaming unless it's live, meaning users cannot pre-record videos and then broadcast them.^[1]

References

1. ^  Yahoo Launches Live - A Live Streaming Video Service
2. ^ http://www.yliveblog.com/blog/2008/11/03/stopping-our-broadcast/
3. ^ Yahoo! Live Quietly Launches, and Loudly Crashes
4. ^ Stopping our broadcast…
5. ^ Chat control freaks, unite!

External links

• Yahoo! Live (Official Homepage 404)
• Yahoo! Live Blog
• Yahoo! Live's twitter feed

 Yahoo! Tech

Yahoo! Tech was a web site that provided product information and setup advice to help its users, as expressed in its slogan "Tech Made Easy." Yahoo! launched the web site in May 2006. After almost 4 years, the Yahoo! Tech website was shut down on March 11, 2010.
The site, which was the first new product from the Santa Monica, California-based Yahoo! Media Group, featured a selection of original, licensed, and user-generated content, along with product ratings and reviews for thousands of tech products across 19 product categories. Plus, the site could be personalized using its "My Tech" feature, which allows users to save products that they own and would like to research in the future.
The site's original content included a weekly web-based reality show called Hook Me Up, where Yahoo! users got a tech makeover—as well as four featured "Yahoo! Tech Advisors," who blogged about how gadgets and current technology affect their lives from the four very different demographic segments (The Mom, The Techie Diva, The Working Guy, and the Boomer.) Yahoo! Tech's content partners included Consumer Reports, Wiley Publishing's For Dummies series, and McGraw-Hill; and it incorporated Yahoo!'s community, search, and shopping services.

Former Yahoo! Tech Bloggers

• Gina Hughes
• Christopher Null
• Ben Patterson
• Becky Worley
• Alexander Yoon
• Robin Raskin
• Dory Devlin
• Tom Samiljan

External links

• Yahoo! Tech site
• "Hook Me Up"at Yahoo! Tech
• Yahoo! Tech's "Tech Advisors"
• A video tour of the web site
• Article in Newsweek
• Article in The New York Times
• Article in The Los Angeles Times

 Yahoo! Time Capsule

The Yahoo! Time Capsule, a brainchild of Jonathan Harris, is a time capsule project by Yahoo! Inc. where users could contribute to a digital legacy of how life was in 2006. The Time Capsule was originally intended to be beamed with a laser into space from a Mexican pyramid in an attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life.^[1] Open to contributions from October 10, 2006 to November 8, 2006, the Time Capsule also hoped to capture the thoughts and feelings of the world in 2006 as an exercise in electronic or "digital anthropology".^[2] At the time of the closing of the capsule, the total number of submissions was 170,857. The highest number of contributions, (32,910) came from the 20-29 age group.^[3]
Although originally slated to be produced at the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan, Mexico, Mexican authorities have denied Yahoo permission fearing damage to the ancient historical site.^[4] Instead the 2006 Yahoo! Time Capsule culminated in a celebrated production on the Jemez Pueblo in New Mexico. The 18 hour live event spanned the evenings of October 25, 26, and 27th and featured the projection of giant digital images of Time Capsule submissions onto an ancient red rock cliff on the reservation. Each night opened with traditional dancing and music by the people of Jemez Pueblo, set in front of the immense projections and lighting that could be seen for miles through the desert. Recordings of international folk music provided by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings accompanied the live global webcast. The Time Capsule event was designed and produced by Environmental Media Artist, Marc Herring, of Herring Media Group Inc.
The Time Capsule closed on November 8, 2006, after which the digital collection of submissions was entrusted to Smithsonian Folkways Recordings based in Washington D.C., where it will remain until Yahoo!'s 25th Birthday in 2020. It is thought that the capsule represents one of the largest compilations of digital media of its kind in the world.
In addition to being able to contribute text, audio, images and videos, visitors could browse previously included entries, comment on them, or forward them. In return for submitting content to the Time Capsule, Yahoo! asked users to vote for one among a list of seven charities which received a portion of $100,000 from Yahoo! based upon the ratio of votes received by contributors. The charities were the World Wildlife Fund, the International Rescue Committee, the Grameen Foundation, UNICEF, One.org, Seeds of Peace, and the International Child Art Foundation.

See also

• Crypt of Civilization
• Westinghouse Time Capsules
• International Time Capsule Society

References

1. ^ Cyntia Barrera Diaz (October 11, 2006). "Time capsule to be beamed from Mexican pyramid". The New Zealand Herald. Reuters. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10405419. Retrieved 2009-07-01. 
2. ^ Webmoor, Timothy (December 2, 2008). "From Silicon Valley to the Valley of Teotihuacan: The "Yahoo!s" of New Media and Digital Heritage". Visual Anthropology Review (American Anthropological Association) 24 (2): 183–200. doi:10.1111/j.1548-7458.2008.00012.x. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121543375/abstract. Retrieved 2009-07-01. 
3. ^ Yahoo! Time Capsule - Facts at the Wayback Machine (archived February 8, 2007).
4. ^ David Utter (October 12, 2006). "Yahoo Time Capsule Banned From Mexico". WebProNews. http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2006/10/12/yahoo-time-capsule-banned-from-mexico. Retrieved 2009-07-01. 

External links

• Yahoo! Time Capsule
• Reflections on the Time Capsule - Jonathan Harris
• Herring Media Group

Yahoo! Pipes

Yahoo! Pipes is a web application from Yahoo! that provides a graphical user interface for building data mashups that aggregate web feeds, web pages, and other services, creating Web-based apps from various sources, and publishing those apps. The application works by enabling users to "pipe" information from different sources and then set up rules for how that content should be modified (for example, filtering). A typical example is New York Times through Flickr, a pipe which takes The New York Times RSS feed and adds a photo from Flickr based on the keywords of each item. Other than the pipe edition page, the website has a documentation page and a discussion page. Docume0ntation page contains information about pipes, a user guide on pipe edition and a troubleshooting guide. The discussion page enables users to discuss the pipes with other users. The site is currently in beta.

Contents 1 History 2 Purpose 3 Creating and Editing a Pipe 3.1 The Canvas 3.2 The Library 3.2.1 Sources 3.2.2 User Inputs 3.2.3 Operators 3.2.4 URL 3.2.5 String 3.2.6 Date 3.2.7 Location 3.2.8 Number 3.3 The Debugger 4 Mashups 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

History

Yahoo! Pipes was released to the public in beta on 7 February 2007. It was built by Pasha Sadri, Ed Ho, Jonathan Trevor, Kevin Cheng and Daniel Raffel of Yahoo! It is described by its creators as:

…a hosted service that lets you remix feeds and create new data mashups in a visual programming environment. The name of the service pays tribute to Unix pipes, which make it easy to chain simple utilities together on the command line.

— Official Yahoo! Pipes Blog, Pipes Blog

Purpose

The purpose of Yahoo! Pipes is to create new pages by aggregating RSS feeds from different sources. Yahoo! Pipes has many modules which can be used either to grab data from sources or to edit the data that is grabbed from the sources. These modules are grouped into categories. These categories are sources, user inputs, operators, URL, string, date, location and number.

Creating and Editing a Pipe

To create or edit a pipe, user has to sign up with a Yahoo! ID. After signing up, user doesn't download a plug-in or a program. Creation and edition of the pipes are compeletely online. User selects the "Create a pipe" option to open the Pipe Editor. Pipe editor is composed of three panes which are the canvas, the library and the debugger. The pipe is created using these panes. After creation, pipe is saved and run. Then user gives a name to the pipe and writes a short description of it. If creator of the pipe decides to publish the pipe, pipe becomes visible for everyone. Other users can clone the pipe. Then they can use and edit their copy for their own use.

The Canvas

Canvas is the main pan where the edition of pipes is done. It is in the center of the page. Modules that are selected from the Library pane are dragged on this pane and connected together. After the all the modules are wired in the desired order the pipe is ready to be used.

The Library

The Library is the place where the modules are selected to be dragged on the Canvas. These modules are grouped by their functions. The library pane is on the left hand side.

 Sources

In this category, there are modules which are used to grab data from one or multiple sources on internet.

User Inputs

The modules in this category enables user to add an input in the pipe. By using the modules in this category, user can add date, location, number, text or URL input to the pipe.

 Operators

The modules in this category are used either to filter or to transform the data that is flowing in the pipe. It contains filter, count, location extractor, loop, regex, rename, reverse, sort, split, sub-element, tail, truncate, union, unique and web service modules.

 URL

There is only URL builder module in this category. Pipes need to have URLs of RSS to get the content. This URL builder enables users to create URLs instead of typing the URL address. It uses a base URL and query parameters to generate other URLs.

 String

The modules in this category are used to either to change or combine the strings. String builder, string regex, string replace, sub string, term extractor, and translate are the modules of this category.

 Date

There are only two modules in this category. They are date builder and date formatter. Date builder module converts a text to a date when there is text in the date format such as "yesterday" or "tomorrow". Date formatter module takes a date as input date and changes it to the desired format.

 Location

This category contains only location builder module. This module recognizes the strings which are the description of a location and converts them to geographical location. Its input is in string form and output in location form.

 Number

This category only has the simple math module. It applies simple math operations to the number input it takes and outputs the result of math operation. Both the input and the output are numbers.

 The Debugger

This is the pane which shows the output of the selected module on the pipe. While designing a pipe, when user clicks on a module on the canvas, the debugger pane shows the output of the selected module. It shows both the title and the content of each item.

 Mashups

A Web Mashup is a Web application that combines data from more than one Web data source into a single integrated Web application. Just as Unix pipes are often used to quickly combine several different data sources but are generally not sufficient to create a useful application, Yahoo! Pipes is a data mashup tool rather than a complete Mashup editor.

Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) is an American public corporation with headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, (in Silicon Valley), that provides services via the Internet 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.
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.

Contents

• 1 History and growth
• 2 Products and services
  • 2.1 Storing personal information and tracking usage
  • 2.2 Communication
  • 2.3 Content
  • 2.4 Co-branded Internet services
  • 2.5 Mobile Services
  • 2.6 Commerce
  • 2.7 Small business
  • 2.8 Advertising
  • 2.9 Yahoo! Next
  • 2.10 Yahoo! BOSS
  • 2.11 Yahoo! Meme
  • 2.12 Yahoo! Koprol
  • 2.13 Y!Connect
  • 2.14 Closed down services
• 3 Revenue model
• 4 Criticism and controversy
  • 4.1 Nazi memorabilia controversy
  • 4.2 Yahoo! paid inclusion controversy
  • 4.3 Adware and spyware
  • 4.4 Work in the People's Republic of China
    • 4.4.1 Imprisonment of Chinese dissidents
      • 4.4.1.1 Shi Tao
      • 4.4.1.2 Li Zhi
      • 4.4.1.3 Sued in US court for outing Chinese dissident Wang Xiaoning
  • 4.5 Chatrooms and message boards
  • 4.6 Image search
  • 4.7 Shark finning controversy
  • 4.8 User privacy
• 5 Yahoo subject of cyber attacks originating in China
• 6 Financial data
  • 6.1 Advertising Revenue
• 7 Yahoo! International
• 8 Logos and themes
• 9 See also
• 10 Notes and references
• 11 External links                                                      

    

   History and growth

  Main article: History of Yahoo!
  See also: Timeline of events for Yahoo!
  In January 1994, Jerry Yang and David Filo were Electrical Engineering graduate students at Stanford University when they created a website named "David and Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web". David and Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web was a directory of other web sites, organized in a hierarchy, as opposed to a searchable index of pages. In April 1994, "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" was renamed "Yahoo!". The yahoo.com domain was created on January 18, 1995.
  Yahoo! grew rapidly throughout the 90s. Like many search engines and web directories, Yahoo! diversified into a Web portal. It also made many high-profile acquisitions. Its stock price skyrocketed during the dot-com bubble, Yahoo! stocks closing at an all-time high of $118.75 a share on 3 January 2000. However, after the dot-com bubble burst, it reached an all-time low of $8.11.
  In 2000, Yahoo! began using Google for search results. Over the next four years, it developed its own search technologies, which it began using in 2004. Yahoo! also revamped its mail service to compete with Google's Gmail in 2007. The company struggled through 2008, with several large layoffs.
  In February 2008, Microsoft Corporation made an unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo! for US$44.6 billion. Yahoo! subsequently formally rejected the bid, claiming that it "substantially undervalues" Yahoo! and was not in the interest of its shareholders. Carol Bartz replaced cofounder Jerry Yang in January 2009
  

  Products and services

  Main article: List of Yahoo!-owned sites and services
  Yahoo! operates the web portal http://www.yahoo.com which provides content including the latest news, entertainment, and sports information. The portal also gives users access to other Yahoo! services like Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Maps, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Groups and Yahoo! Messenger.
  

  Storing personal information and tracking usage

  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.
  As of May 22, 2008, An article in computer world states that Yahoo has a 2-petabyte, specially built data warehouse, which it uses to analyze the behavior of its half-billion Web visitors per month, processing 24 billion events a day. Yahoo Claimed it is expected to grow in multiples of 10 petabytes by 2009 and that this database is the largest in the world.In contrast the internal revenue services database of all taxpayers weighs in at only 150 TB.
  As of December 18, 2008, Yahoo! retains search requests for a period of 13 months. However, In response to European Regulators Yahoo scrambles the last eight digits of a users IP address after three months, rendering them partially anonymous.
  

  Communication

  Yahoo! provides Internet communication services such as Yahoo! Messenger and Yahoo! Mail. In March 2007, Yahoo! announced that their e-mail service would offer unlimited storage beginning May 2007.
  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 would no longer provide support or perform bug fixes on Yahoo! 360° as they intended to abandon it in early 2008 in favor of a "universal profile" that will be similar to their Mash experimental system.
  

  Content

  Yahoo! partners with numerous content providers in products such as Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Music, Yahoo! Movies, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Answers and Yahoo! Games to provide media content and news. Yahoo! also provides a personalization service, My Yahoo!, which enables users to combine their favorite Yahoo! features, content feeds and information onto a single page.
  On March 31, 2008, Yahoo! launched Shine, a site tailored for women seeking online information and advice between the ages of 25 and 54.
  

  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.
  

  Mobile Services

  Yahoo! Mobile offers services for on-the-go messaging, such as email, instant messaging and mobile blogging; information services, search and alerts; entertainment, ring tones, and Yahoo! Photos for camera phones.
  Yahoo! also 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.
  Yahoo! uses Novarra's mobile content transcoding service for the oneSearch platform.
  On October 8, 2010, Yahoo! announced plans to brings video chat to iPhones and Android-based phones via its popular Yahoo Messenger instant messaging servic
  

  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. Yahoo! Auctions were discontinued in 2007 except for Asia
  

  Small business

  

  

  The Small Business homepage as of August 2010
  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.
  

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

  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.
  

  ] Yahoo! BOSS

  Yahoo! Search BOSS is a service that allows developers to build search applications based on Yahoo!'s search technology. Early Partners in the program include Hakia, Me.dium, Delver, Daylife and Yebol.^[26] On October 8, 2010, The Yahoo Search Blog announced BOSS is switching, as expected, to a paid model. They will charge on a cost-per-query model where the price will vary from $0.40 to $0.75 CPM (cost per 1000 BOSS queries). The price, as Yahoo explained, will depend on if you are querying web, image, news or other information. Yahoo said they plan on offering BOSS v1, the free version, for free 60 days after BOSS v2, the paid version, is launched – which is expected in early 2011.^[27]
  

  Yahoo! Meme

  Yahoo! Meme is a beta social service, similar to the popular social networking sites Twitter and Jaiku.
  

  Yahoo! Koprol

  Yahoo! Koprol is a Indonesian social networking based on location like GPS without any GPS devices.
  

  Y!Connect

  Y!Connect is a feature that enables individuals to leave comments in online publication boards by using their Yahoo ID, instead of having to register with each individual publication. The Wall Street Journal reported that Yahoo plans to mimic this strategy used by rival Facebook Inc. to help drive traffic to its site 
  

  Closed down services

  Main article: List of Yahoo!-owned sites and services#Closed/defunct services
  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. Yahoo! purchased Geocities in 1999. Ten years later Yahoo! closed Geocities 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,"OOcities.com", and more.
  Yahoo! 360° was a popular blogging/social networking beta service launched in March 2005 by Yahoo! and closed on July 13, 2009.
  Yahoo! Mash beta was another social service closed after one year of operation prior to leaving beta status.
  Yahoo! Photos was shut down on September 20, 2007, in favor of integration with
   was a web site that provided product information and setup advice to users. Yahoo! launched the web site in May 2006. On March 11, 2010, Yahoo! closed down the service and redirected users to Yahoo!'s technology news section
  Other discontinued services include Farechase, My Web, Audio Search, Pets, Live, Kickstart, Briefcase, and Yahoo! for Teachers.
  

  Revenue model

  About 88% of total revenues for the fiscal year 2009 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.
  Other forms of advertising which bring in revenue for Yahoo! include display and contextual advertising.
  

  Criticism and controversy

  For more details on this topic, see Criticism of Yahoo!.

  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 and "Neo-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.
  

  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.This program was lucrative for Yahoo!, 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).
  Yahoo! discontinued the paid inclusion / search submit program at the end of 2009.
  

  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.
  

  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)

  Yahoo! as well as other search engines, have 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.
  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.
  

  Imprisonment of Chinese dissidents

  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.^[48]
  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.In April 2006, Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) was investigated by Hong Kong's Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data.
  On June 2, 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
  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." Analyst reports and human rights organizations have said that this evidence directly contradicts Yahoo!'s testimony before the U.S. Congress in February 2006
  Yahoo! contends it must respect the laws of governments in jurisdictions where it is operating.
  

  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".
  

  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.
  On April 18, 2007, Xiaoning's wife Yu Ling sued Yahoo! under human rights laws in federal court in San Francisco, California, United States. 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."
  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.

  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.

  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.
  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".
  

  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.Yahoo! News' message board section was closed December 19, 2006, due to the trolling phenomenon.
  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.
  

  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"
  

  Shark finning controversy

  Yahoo! is a 40% owner of Alibaba, which facilitates the sale of shark-derived products. 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." As a minority-owner of Alibaba, Yahoo! is not able to directly control that company's actions in China.
  

  User privacy

  On November 30, 2009, Yahoo! was criticized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for sending a DMCA notice to whistle-blower website "Cryptome" for publicly posting Yahoo!'s "Compliance Guide for Law Enforcement", which details prices and procedures on obtaining private information pertaining to Yahoo!'s subscribers.
  

  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.
  

  Financial data

  Financial data, US$ million

  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

  Advertising Revenue

  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%.
  

  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 stakeand 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, however, due to the financial crisis at that time, those plans were frozen. 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.
  

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

Yahoo! Directory , Yahoo! Music, Yahoo! Movies.

Yahoo! Directory


The Yahoo! Directory is a web directory which rivals the Open Directory Project in size. The directory was Yahoo!'s first offering. When Yahoo! changed to crawler-based listings for its main results in October 2002, the human-edited directory's significance dropped, but it was still being updated in August 2010. The Yahoo! Directory offers two options for suggesting websites for possible listing: "Standard", which is free and a paid submission process that offers expedited review Payment is required when suggesting a commercial site.
Yahoo! provides both a search engine and a directory service, and the directory is searchable separately from the rest of their search engine results.
While Yahoo! has closed a number of country-specific directories, the company has stated that it currently "has no plans to close the main Yahoo! Directory" 

See also

• List of web directories

References

1. ^  How do I add my web site to the Yahoo! Directory?, Yahoo! website, accessed January 30, 2008
2. ^ Yahoo! Directory Submit, Yahoo! website, accessed January 30, 2008
3. ^ "Yahoo! Closes European Directories, Says US Directory Is Safe", SearchEngineLand.com, accessed August 13, 2010.  

 Yahoo! Music
Yahoo! Music, owned by Yahoo!, is the provider of a variety of music services, including Internet radio, music videos, news, artist information, and original programming. Users with Yahoo! accounts can gain access to hundreds of thousands of songs sorted by artist, album, song and genre.

Contents 1 History 2 Products 3 Key dates 4 Lyrics 5 Limits 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

History

Yahoo! Music began as "LAUNCH", a website and magazine produced by LAUNCH Media which Yahoo! acquired for USD$12 million in 2001. LAUNCH was later rebranded as "Yahoo! Music", then simply "Y! Music" in February 2005. LAUNCH's LAUNCHcast Internet radio and music video offerings were integrated into Yahoo!'s site along with artist profiles containing an extensive selection of music and biographical information.
Yahoo! Music was the number one online music site in terms of audience reach and total time spent in March 2007.
As of June 2008^[update], Yahoo! Music's old website is inactive and redirecting to the new website at new.music.yahoo.com.

Products

Yahoo! Music offers a variety of products, including:

• Yahoo! Music Radio (formerly LAUNCHcast) (Content provided by CBS Radio) and LAUNCHcast Plus Internet radio (No Longer offered beginning Feb. 2009)
• Yahoo! Music Jukebox
• Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscription streaming and download service
• Live Sets - Exclusive video concerts from A-list artists
• Who's Next - Listeners vote on emerging artists
• Pepsi Smash on Yahoo! Music - Exclusive video interviews, performances, and reality segments
• Artist profiles, music videos and lyrics
• Official Grammy Awards coverage

Key dates

In 2001, Yahoo! purchased LAUNCH Media, makers of the LAUNCHcast Internet radio service. On September 14, 2004, Yahoo! purchased Musicmatch, Inc., makers of the Musicmatch Jukebox software. As of Musicmatch 10.1, Yahoo! has rebranded Musicmatch Jukebox as Yahoo! Music Musicmatch Jukebox, and integrated it with the Yahoo! Music Engine store. The main difference is the branding and physical program. In 2005, Yahoo! Music became the first major online music service to provide a $5 per month unlimited download service similar to the Open Music Model, albeit with digital rights management, called Yahoo! Music Unlimited. In 2008, Yahoo! announced that Yahoo! Music Unlimited will be merged into Rhapsody.This merge was completed with the shutdown of Yahoo! Music Unlimited on September 30, 2008.

Lyrics

Yahoo! Music provides officially licensed lyrics. Only officially licensed lyrics should be linked to per Wikipedia.

Limits

• Local stations are limited to CBS affiliates
• No play-on-demand, playback, rewind, or fast-forward
• No direct customization, although rating songs influences the songs played
• Songs cannot be banned entirely, although a one-star rating will have it played very rarely
• Commercial interruptions every hour
• A maximum of six skips per hour per station. Refreshing or reloading the player, as well as changing the station, will use a skip.
• Banner ads, which cannot be blocked
• As of 2010, there is no premium service to remove skip limits or ads.

  Yahoo! Movies
Yahoo! Movies (formerly Upcoming Movies), provided by the Yahoo! network, is home to a large collection of information on movies, past and new releases, trailers and clips, box office information, and showtimes and movie theater information. Yahoo! Movies also includes red carpet photos, actor galleries, and production stills. Users can read critic's reviews, write and read other user reviews, get personalized movie recommendations, purchase movie tickets online, and create and view other user's lists of their favorite movies.

Contents 1 Special coverage 2 Key dates 3 References 4 External links

Special coverage

Yahoo! Movies devotes special coverage to the Academy Awards with a special Oscars site. The Oscars site includes articles, show coverage, a list of the night's big winners, photos, videos, polls, and a blog, written by J. Keith van Straaten.
From 2002 to 2007, Yahoo! Movies was the home of Greg's Previews of Upcoming Movies, an enhanced version of Upcomingmovies.com, written by its creator, Greg Dean Schmitz. During much of this time, Schmitz frequently appeared in print, radio and television as a representative of Yahoo! Movies.
Yahoo! Movies also releases special guides, such as the Summer Movie Guide, which contains information on the major releases of the summer with exclusive trailers and clips, photos, box office information, polls, and unique editorial content.
Additionally, Yahoo! Movies is teaming up with MTV to host a special site for the MTV Movie Awards, which will feature show information and a section where users can submit original movie shorts parodying last year's movies for the chance to win the new award, Best Movie Spoof.

Key dates

• May 12, 1998 - Yahoo! announces the launch of Yahoo! Movies.

• May 25, 2005 - Yahoo! Movies releases personalized movie recommendations.