Yahoo owner biography

Computer programmer and co-founder of Yahoo!

For other people named Jerry Yang, see Jerry Yang (disambiguation).

In this Chinese name, the family name is Yang.

Jerry Chih-Yuan Yang (Chinese: 楊致遠; pinyin: Yáng Zhìyuǎn; born Yang Chih-Yuan; November 6, 1968) is a Taiwanese-born American billionaire computer programmer, internet entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. He is the co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo! Inc. and founding partner of AME Cloud Ventures. As of December 2024, Yang has a net worth of $2.6 billion.

Early life and education

Yang was born Yang Chih-Yuan in Taipei, Taiwan, on November 6, 1968. His mother was a professor of English and drama and his father died when he was two, by which time Yang had a younger brother, Chih-Kong Ken Yang. In 1978, his mother moved the family to San Jose, California, where his grandmother and extended family took care of the boys while his mother taught English to other immigrants. After moving to the US, Yang took the American name Jerry; his mother, Lily; and his younger brother, Ken. He says that he only knew one English word, "shoe", when he came to America, but became fluent in English in about three years.

During his time at San Jose, Yang attended Ruskin Elementary School, Sierramont Middle, and Piedmont Hills High School. He graduated from Piedmont Hills High School and went on to earn both a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering from Stanford University in four years. He met David Filo at Stanford in 1989, and the two went to Japan in 1992 for a six-month exchange program, where he met his future wife, Akiko Yamazaki, also participating in the exchange program.

Career

Yang founded Yahoo! in 1994 and was CEO from 2007 to 2009. He left Yahoo! in

See also: Timeline of Yahoo!

Yahoo! was founded in January 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo, who were electrical engineering graduates at Stanford University when they created a website named "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web". The Guide was a directory of other websites, organized in a hierarchy, as opposed to a searchable index of pages. In April 1994, Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web was renamed "Yahoo!". The word "YAHOO" is a backronym for "Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle" or "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle." The yahoo.com domain was created on January 18, 1995.

Yahoo! grew rapidly through 1990–1999 and diversified into a web portal, followed by numerous high-profile acquisitions. The company's stock price rose rapidly during the dot-com bubble and closed at an all-time high of US$118.75 in 2000. However, after the dot-com bubble burst, it reached an all-time low of $8.11 in 2001. Yahoo! formally rejected an acquisition bid from the Microsoft Corporation in 2008. In early 2012, Yahoo laid off 2,000 employees (14 percent of the workforce). This was the largest layoff in Yahoo!'s history.

Carol Bartz replaced co-founder Yang as chief executive officer in January 2009, but was fired by the board of directors in September 2011. Tim Morse was appointed as interim CEO following Bartz's departure. Former PayPal president Scott Thompson became CEO in January 2012 and after he resigned was replaced by Ross Levinsohn as the company's interim CEO on May 13, 2012. On July 16, former Google executive Marissa Mayer became the CEO of the company.

Mayer resigned as CEO of Yahoo

The future doesn’t look so bright when at age 10 the only English word you know is “shoe.” That is unless you’re Jerry Yang.

Yang moved to San Jose, California, from Taiwan in 1978 with his brother and mother after his father died.

“We got made fun of a lot at first,” Yang told Fortune magazine. “I didn’t even know who the faces were on the paper money.”

This spurred Yang to work harder. He mastered English in just three years, was elected student body president and graduated first in his high school class.

Despite working part-time to help support himself at Stanford, Yang acquired both his bachelor’s and master’s in just four years. But he left Stanford to run Yahoo! before he could complete his PhD.

While at Stanford, Yang and classmate David Filo ventured into the uncharted territory of the Internet. In 1994, searching through Web content was not unlike searching for library books. Yang and Filo created a directory of websites organized in a hierarchy rather than a searchable list. At first called “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web,” they gave it the acronym Yahoo! for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.”

Yahoo! was an overnight sensation and Yang, its “Chief Yahoo!” (CEO), became one of America’s wealthiest men. At one point, the company was worth $130 billion. It survived the dot-com bubble and subsequently diversified its activities. It acquired Four11 and its webmail, Rocketmail, which became Yahoo! Mail; ClassicGames.com became Yahoo! Games; and eGroups mailing lists became Yahoo! Groups. In June 2017, Verizon bought Yahoo’s core operating business for $4.48 billion.

In 2012, Yang left Yahoo! He is currently investing in the next generation of technologies at his firm AME Cloud Ventures, where he has invested in more than 50 startups. He is also investing in space travel and longevity research, two potentially high-growth areas.

Yang has kept a close connection to his alma mater. In 2007, he and his wife pl