Yahoo Search Engine is one of the oldest search engines on the internet, dating back to the early days of the World Wide Web. It was founded in January 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo, electrical engineering graduate students at Stanford University.
Initially, Yahoo was a web directory which listed websites by category rather than searching for keywords. However, it quickly grew in popularity and became a full-fledged search engine, competing with other early search engines such as AltaVista and Lycos.
In 1996, Yahoo Search launched its first algorithmic search engine, which used a crawler to index and rank web pages based on content and relevance. This was a major step forward for the search engine, and it quickly gained market share in the rapidly growing internet search market.
Over the years, Yahoo Search continued to evolve and innovate, introducing features such as image, news, and local search. It also partnered with other companies, such as Google, to provide search results for their websites.
In 2002, Yahoo acquired Inktomi, a company specialising in search engine technology, to improve the performance and scalability of its search engine. It also launched a paid search advertising platform, which allowed businesses to bid on keywords and display their ads alongside search results.
However, Yahoo Search began to struggle in the face of increasing competition from Google, which had become the dominant search engine in the market. Yahoo Search lost market share and relevance despite attempts to improve its search technology and user experience.
In 2009, Yahoo formed a partnership with Microsoft, under which Yahoo Search would use Microsoft’s Bing search engine to provide search results. This allowed Yahoo to focus on other areas of its business, such as content and advertising.
Yahoo Search is still available today, but it has a relatively small market share compared to Google and Bing. It remains a popular search engine in some regions and for certain types of searches, but its heyday as a dominant player in the search market has long since passed.