Yahoo

For those of you who’ve done any kinds of thesis work, it’s pretty laborious and tedious, to say the least, so at the beginning of 1994, we started to procrastinate and spend a lot of time on the newly emerged “web.”

Jerry Yang

I think that it’s always possible to have a great company if you have great ideas. I will say that since the web has become more commercialized, it also takes some good financial resources to build a great business, but as I always say, you have to have the idea first.

Jerry Yang

The relevance of search is still the Holy Grail for any search application.

Jerry Yang

Really, we’d do anything to keep from working on our theses. And then, a funny thing happened.

Jerry Yang

We called it “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web.” Before we knew it, people from all over the world were using this database that we created.

Jerry Yang

We look at our users’ interests, without our users we don’t have business.

Jerry Yang

Certainly Yahoo! wouldn’t exist without the sort of environment that Stanford gave us to allow us to create it.

Jerry Yang

It was a really gradual thing, but we’d find ourselves spending more and more time on it. It was getting to be a burden.

Jerry Yang

They told us we were crashing their system and that we’d have to move the thing off campus.

Jerry Yang

For a $5 piece of wire, I can talk to anybody in the world.

Jerry Yang

Now we’re seeing services and applications. This has been one of the promises the Internet has offered for a long time — the consumer can really be the programmer.

Jerry Yang

We worry about staying competitive as well as continue to come up with new things. What I can say is that look for Yahoo! to continue to push the envelope on what we can offer for free, as well as a continued focus to develop the Yahoo! set of services around the world.

Jerry Yang

Okay, just think about it for a moment. I mean, just look at this. Web sites change all the time; this one is not the same as it was yesterday. So how often are they going to review their reviews? Will those reviews really be current and meaningful? I mean, with a few thousand sites it might be practical. But with 100,000 sites? How many sites can one reviewer review in one day? I mean, it would take an army. We get a thousand requests each day to have sites added to our list

Jerry Yang

I think in this business you really have to prepare for the scale involved. And if the business model won’t scale up, then in the end it won’t work.

Jerry Yang

To be doing business in China, or anywhere else in the world, we have to comply with local law. We don’t know what they want that information for, we’re not told what they look for. If they give us the proper documentation and court orders, we give them things that satisfy both our privacy policy and the local rules.

Jerry Yang

The biggest struggle was probably giving up something that we’d been doing for five or six years, doing our Ph.D.s and almost being there.

Jerry Yang

We conducted an intense review of our business, examining everything from our strategy and culture to our competitive position and how the marketplace is evolving. We knew we had to change not only our business, but also how we prioritize and make decisions.

Jerry Yang

We had to shift from a siloed mentality to a more collaborative organization that marches toward a common horizon. We had to determine which businesses to invest in, and which to begin to exit or de-emphasize.

Jerry Yang

We think small business in the US and other markets are very fragmented and a tremendous opportunity for a quasi-automated business model like we have to take advantage of.

Jerry Yang

We defined a strategy that revolves around making Yahoo! indispensable to an ecosystem of consumers, advertisers, publishers and developers while tapping into three key differentiators, generating and leveraging insights, deploying open platforms, and becoming partner of choice.

Jerry Yang

What’s key here is our transformation from selling inventory on primarily the Yahoo! network, to becoming an advertising company that delivers comprehensive, integrated, and targeted solutions on Yahoo! and beyond.

Jerry Yang

We have phenomenal technology platforms and data infrastructure, and it’s time to share.

Jerry Yang

The possibilities are endless and “open” is all part of a new way of operating at Yahoo!

Jerry Yang

We’ve scripted our strategy, sharpened our organization, determined how we’ll prioritize, and zeroed in on our big bets.

Jerry Yang

I believe that Yahoo! is too often defined by the competitive landscape, rather than by what we can accomplish with our assets. I’m determined for us to define our own path.

Jerry Yang

The more I look back, the more I realize how fortunate we were to find the right partners, the right management. It seemed natural and intuitive then. Now I realize what key parts of our business they are.

Jerry Yang

The “Field of Dreams” Internet- where the assumption was “If you build it, they will come”- is no longer a reality. Content sites can no longer grow organically, and I give only six more months for most new electronic commerce sites.

Jerry Yang

Stanford had a huge part in shaping us. We saw Jim Clark (co-founder and chairman of Netscape) coming to school. Bill Gates came and built his building next to our trailer. The venture capital is there. If you are interested in starting a business, you’ll find other people talking about launching companies.

Jerry Yang

Do not be surprised if you don’t see a lot of me in the press in the near future as we keep our heads down working through the challenges and opportunities at hand. I’m sure not everyone will agree with that approach, but it feels right to me. I’m a big believer in doing versus talking. We’re focused on making changes from the inside out and we’ll get out there when the time is right.

Jerry Yang

Technology is an important component of what we do, but our real competitive advantage is to apply technology to become the best web-based communication, content, and commerce service.

Jerry Yang

Originally, it was Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web, but we settled on Yahoo! It is a pretty recognizable brand name.

Jerry Yang

Advertising on the internet is still very much in the beginning stages. I think there are a lot of things happening that are making it better for both advertisers and consumers.

Jerry Yang

Our purpose/goal is the same, to keep the internet free to the users and make the business part work by finding sponsors and advertisers who want to reach our audience. I think it is one of the keys to keep improving the usefulness of the web and make sure that as many people as possible can use it and derive value from it.

Jerry Yang

You have to realize when David and I were doing this it was just for fun. We never thought it would even become a business.

Jerry Yang

I think that it’s always possible to have a great company if you have great ideas. I will say that since the web has become more commercialized, it also takes some good financial resources to build a great business, but as I always say, you have to have the idea first.

Jerry Yang

The time is now. The Internet is still young, the opportunities ahead are tremendous, and I’m ready to rally our nearly 12,000 Yahoos around the world to help seize them.

Jerry Yang

While our business continues to grow, we need to dramatically improve our performance and I intend to put us back on a winning path. There’s a lot of heavy lifting ahead, but I’m feeling good about our awesome assets, our initial progress against our challenges, and our vast opportunities if we nail down and execute against the right plan.

Jerry Yang

A lot of the credit goes to the smart and great people that have since joined Yahoo!, because they took it upon themselves to make Yahoo! great.

Jerry Yang

I have absolute conviction about Yahoo!’s potential for long-term success as an Internet leader. Yahoo! is a company that started with a vision and a dream and, make no mistake, that dream is very much alive. I’m committed to doing whatever it takes to transform Yahoo! into an even greater success in the future.

Jerry Yang

Advertisers in general are demanding a more and more relevant experience. The more we know about a user, where they are located, what their interests are, the more we can match the right ad to the right time.

David Filo

I was terribly bored.

David Filo

It was the real early days of the Net. We’d wander around the Net and find something interesting, and then I’d ask Jerry, “Hey, where was that cool page we saw the other day,” and we could never remember where it was. I mean, it could take us hours to just get back there, to find it.

David Filo

There was no bidding war. We liked the deal with Sequoia. For us, the most important thing was that we could hold onto it. We really weren’t into this for the money or for the fast payoff.

David Filo

We operate in many countries, in many jurisdictions in the world. As part of that, for the sake of the employees working in those areas, we have to abide by the laws.

David Filo

You’ll run into problems where governments don’t share those values. Long term, these values will win out.

David Filo

Thousands of people were producing new Web sites every day. We were just trying to take all that stuff and organize it to make it useful. As it became more popular, it became pretty clear we would have to get more people involved.

David Filo

It grew on me.

David Filo

What I didn’t really expect getting into it was probably that it would require so much immediate attention.

David Filo

It is a place for adventures. A place to discover things.

David Filo

We’re not in this for the fast money. Really, what we want is to be part of this industry.

David Filo

I feel pretty lucky. I mean I work all day and sometimes all night, but I like the people I work with and I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing.

David Filo