About Yahoo! Rise and fall of

Yang Zhiyuan: CEO of Yahoo for ten years

"Only in 10 years, the Internet has changed the way netizens handle everything, which is an extraordinary and wonderful experience. From beginning to end, we all hope that our products can meet the needs of users and help them realize their dreams. But we are not limited to this-we want to help you discover, practice, share and communicate more. "

After Wang An, who is the most exciting China person for Wall Street analysts? If you have to choose one, it is Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang! )。

1978, Yang Zhiyuan and his younger brother Kenyang, who were only 10 years old, were still shy boys when they took their mother's skirts to immigrate to the United States. Because he lost his father at the age of 2, Yang Zhiyuan looks more mature and steady than other children of the same age, but no one who has seen him can imagine that he can become a miracle of Nasdaq at the age of 28.

Wall Street never lacks miracles!

Play Yahoo!

Yahoo is played by Jerry Yang and his good friend david filo.

Before 10, Yang Zhiyuan spent his childhood in Taiwan Province. His father died when he was two years old, and his mother was an English and drama professor, raising Yang Zhiyuan and his younger brother Kenyang alone. At that time, Yang Zhiyuan's aunt lived in America. For children's education and future development, the whole family moved to the United States and settled in San Jose, California.

When he was a teenager, Yang Zhiyuan entered the mainstream culture of the United States, and his personality gradually became cheerful.

Yang Zhiyuan studied hard and was admitted to Stanford University with 1990. He likes the rigor of engineering and is deeply influenced by "Silicon Valley". Despite the tight school curriculum, Yang Zhiyuan participated in many social activities, which inadvertently exercised his social skills and laid the foundation for him to be independent and control a dynamic media company in the future. In addition, Yang Zhiyuan also studied economics courses, and his idea at that time was that if he set up a company in the future, these might come in handy.

It took Yang Zhiyuan four years to complete his undergraduate and master's degrees, and he met Ferro when he was a doctor. They became close friends in the process of study, work and later entrepreneurship.

Yang Zhiyuan is outgoing and sociable; Ferro, on the other hand, is an introverted person and never wants to be interviewed by reporters. He is only interested in technology. Yang Zhiyuan said that he and Ferro are the best combination. "In the commercial sense, it is difficult to find a better complementary partner than us. We can understand each other. Although we are stubborn by nature, we can understand each other at critical moments and show no stubbornness. " They have similar views on the world, things and technology. They even have the same doctoral supervisor, and Ferro lives in the dormitory next door to him.

Near graduation, both Yang Zhiyuan and Ferro consulted a lot of materials according to their learning needs. "In fact, our initial idea was a very common idea, that is, to collect many websites on the Internet and make a searcher for people to find and search."

Yang Zhiyuan and Ferro named their software "Jerrr World Wide Web Guide". 1 10,000 in the autumn of 1994, its traffic volume has exceeded110,000 for the first time. In 1995, Yang Zhiyuan and Ferrer named their station YAHOO! )。

For entrepreneurship, Yang Zhiyuan thinks it originated from such a simple idea, but now anyone can think of it. But it was at 1994 that the idea came into being, and then it was not easy to meet a person who was willing to make venture capital, take out10 million dollars to make this investment, and then try to make money.

However, Yahoo did catch up with the Internet. 1995 The company established earned 1996 USD, which was successfully listed that year.

Don't be CEO

Unlike Wang An, the founder of Wang An Computer, who has an absolute desire for control and management culture, Yang Zhiyuan and his partners built Yahoo into a very open company from the beginning.

1In April, 1995, with the support of Sequoia Capital, they set up their own company with assets of about USD 4 million. At the same time, Sequoia Capital also found a suitable general manager candidate-Tim Kugger, who is also an alumnus of Stanford. Therefore, Yahoo is managed by Kugger, and Ferro and Yang Zhiyuan can concentrate on their research work. Later, Ferro was in charge of technology development and Yang Zhiyuan was in charge of external public relations.

Of course, Yahoo's most valuable products are Jerry Yang and Philo. Yang Zhiyuan is extroverted and often indulges in the past. Philo, on the other hand, is very introverted and always tries to refuse interviews with reporters.

1in the autumn of 995, Yahoo had to launch the second round of investment war. Although there was a lot of advertising revenue before, the amount converted into cash was extremely limited. At this time, the Japanese consortium Softbank began to invest in Yahoo, which brought Yang Zhiyuan's company to a new stage.

Softbank met Yahoo through Sequoia. Yang Zhiyuan is very excited to learn that Softbank will invest, which is the best time to create Yahoo in Japan.

On March 7th, 1996, Yahoo shares were officially listed. Although its two major competitors Lycos and Excite ranked first, this day was still rated as "Wall Street Incident". It was officially traded on April 12, which coincided with Friday. The stock was initially priced at 13 USD. However, the trading frenzy, with an average of 6 transactions per hour, soared to $43 and finally closed at $33. Yahoo's market value reached $850 million, 200 times that of Sequoia Capital.

"When we started our business, we knew that none of us would be CEOs, and we knew that none of us would listen to each other, so we had to have a third party to arbitrate." They are going to find a professional CEO. Someone knocked at the door, but he said, "The first thing I did when I took office was to change my name." Hearing this, the two men immediately opened the door to see Fu Jian. Today, they are all "Yahoo Chiefs".

The road of ten years

On March 2, 2005, US Eastern Time, Yahoo celebrated 10 birthday. As one of the celebrations held around the world, Yahoo founder Jerry Yang, chairman and CEO TerrySemel and Ferro and other management teams attended the opening ceremony of the Nasdaq stock market in the morning and rang the trading bell together.

Looking back, Yahoo grew up from a small company that once lived in a trailer at Stanford University. The initial simple idea was to make the Internet world more orderly. After 10 years of rapid development, it has grown into a well-known Internet brand recognized worldwide, with more than 345 million loyal users worldwide.

In this 10 year, Yahoo went from the peak of the Internet to the bottom, but persisted. In the past 10 years, many Internet companies far beyond Yahoo disappeared, such as Netscape and Infosys.

Yang Zhiyuan said: "In just 65,438+00 years, the Internet has changed the way netizens handle everything, which is an extraordinary and wonderful experience. From beginning to end, we all hope that our products can meet the needs of users and help them realize their dreams. But we are not limited to this-we want to help you discover, practice, share and communicate more. "

As part of celebrating Yahoo 10 birthday, Yahoo also launched a special website "Yahoo! Network retrospective exhibition. " Through 99 directories, this website tells the great story of Internet development in the past 10 years. These directories will include every great or small moment of Internet development, and celebrate the great 10 years of this media and the whole industry, as well as Yahoo itself.

Each unit of these catalogues has a free exchange forum. Here, Yahoo users can communicate with each other and share their memories and opinions with Yahoo. The100th directory module will be reserved for Yahoo users to write their own ideas about the future development of the Internet. After all, Yahoo's current journey is only the initial stage of the Internet.

Optimistic about the China market

Yahoo entered China for five years, but its business has been bleak. When Yi Bei bought Yi Bei and Amazon was ready to enter China, Yang Zhiyuan couldn't sit still. He also hopes to complete Yahoo's layout in China through acquisition.

In June, 2003, Yang Zhiyuan and Zhou Honghui reached an agreement in Hongkong to buy all the businesses of 372 1 company for $65,438+200 million, pushing Zhou Honghui, a "local turtle" faction, to the position of the president of Yahoo China. At that time, Yang Zhiyuan hoped to realize the "catfish effect" through Zhou Honghui, thus developing Yahoo's business in China.

At the staff meeting of Yahoo China, Yang Zhiyuan once said that, in a sense, China represents the future of the entire Internet industry.

After purchasing 372 1, Yang Zhiyuan came to China for the second time. Every time, we go deep into the grassroots to see what the market in China is like.

When Jerry Yang first arrived in China, he took Zhou Honghui directly to the Internet cafe and watched it carefully for a long time. For the second time, when Yang Zhiyuan and his party went to Beijing to attend the Fortune Global Forum, they also specially went to the Pacific computer market in Shanghai to watch the electronic retailing in China.

Even so, Jerry Yang was never satisfied with China's business. Yahoo's portal plan in China has also been stranded indefinitely.

When Google and MSN entered China one after another, how could Yang Zhiyuan not be anxious?

Under the matchmaking of Masayoshi Son, president of Softbank, Jerry Yang and Jack Ma of Alibaba came together.

The development course of Yahoo

1994 65438+ 10, the founders Yang Zhiyuan and David Ferro founded the online game guide information base;

1March 1995, Yahoo was established;

1September 1995, invested by Reuters and Softbank;

1in April, 1996, Nasdaq was successfully listed;

In March 2000, B2B business was launched;

In June, 2004, 1,1.200 million dollars acquired 3721;

In August 2005, the business in China was sold to Alibaba, and the two companies formed a strategic cooperative relationship.

From 200 1, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google began to compete for acquisitions, although Google was only a search engine in the eyes of Yahoo and Microsoft at that time, which was not worth mentioning. But now Google has surpassed Yahoo in IPO and followed Microsoft in popularity. In the era of Web 1.0, the businesses operated by these three companies can be described by operating systems, network services and search engines. But now times have changed. Web 2.0 makes the Internet an open network operating system, and the old models and concepts are no longer applicable. The so-called Eastern Decade and Western Decade, the evolution of the Internet has caused these three giants to dispute with each other. In addition to strengthening the development and strategic deployment of their own products, everyone also buys some small companies from time to time to improve their product lines. The following is the historical timeline of the acquisition of the three companies from 200 1 to the present.

(Click on the picture, drag the mouse left and right in the opened webpage, and browse continuously with the timeline)

From 200 1 to now, three * * * companies have acquired 85 companies, and the highest price should be YouTube acquired by Google in 2006 10,1600 million dollars (stock, not cash). In these acquisitions, we can clearly see the development strategies of these three companies: Google prefers search and statistical technology companies, and recently prefers online collaboration, such as Writely and Jotspot；; Yahoo is more interested in large-scale community and social networking services, such as delicious, flickr and Bix, which were recently purchased. When it comes to Microsoft, the two basic routes of operating system and Office are definitely unchanged, and how to connect to the Internet (not to be eliminated by the ever-changing Internet) is the most critical, so we will buy Groove Networks, ProClarity and Desktop Standard.

If this continues, the products and services we need in our daily life and work will basically be arranged by the three giants of the network in this new era. However, the architecture of the Internet is inherently doomed to equal opportunities for all participants, and new models and standards are not formulated by any commercial company. Any concept and application must be collectively screened by all Internet users. When the results of these screening have accumulated to a certain extent, a new wave of changes will come. So you can't say who will be the next Google.

I found some information on the internet. Lz, tidy up