History of Yahoo!
On March 8, 1997, Yahoo! acquired online communications company Four11. Four11's webmail service, Rocketmail, became Yahoo! Mail. Yahoo! also acquired ClassicGames.com and turned it into Yahoo! Games. Yahoo! then acquired direct marketing company Yoyodyne Entertainment, Inc. on October 12, 1998. In January 1999, Yahoo! acquired web hosting provider GeoCities. Another company Yahoo! took over was eGroups, which became Yahoo! Groups in June 2000. On March 8, 1998, Yahoo! launched Yahoo! Pager, an instant messaging service that was renamed Yahoo! Messenger a year later.
History of Yahoo!
While the yahoo.com domain was created in January 1995, by the end of 1994 Yahoo! had already received one million hits. Yang and Filo realized their website had massive business potential, and on March 2, 1995, Yahoo! was incorporated.
Yang and Filo sought out the advice of entrepreneur Randy Adams for a recommendation of a venture capital firm and Adams introduced them to Michael Moritz. On April 5, 1995, Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital provided Yahoo! with two rounds of venture capital, raising approximately $3 million. On April 12, 1996, Yahoo! had its initial public offering, raising $33.8 million by selling 2.6 million shares at the opening bid of $13 each.