With a 'Yahoo!' Stanford endows chair

The founders of the Yahoo! Internet directory have given Stanford University $2 million to establish a new endowed chair in its School of Engineering. David Filo, 30, and Jerry Yang, 28, who created Yahoo! in 1994 in Stanford's Computer Systems Laboratory, are the youngest individuals ever to endow a chair at the university, according to Stanford spokesperson David Salisbury. "Stanford was an integral part of the creation of Yahoo!," Yang said. "Through the endowment of a professorship, David and I feel that we can give back to the university by providing a long-term resource to advance levels of teaching and research." The pair requested that the Yahoo! Founders Chair -- the 40th endowed chair in Stanford's School of Engineering -- be given to an individual at the forefront of the information systems technology field who has demonstrated entrepreneurial spirit, according to Salisbury. "We believe that, by allowing the endowment to focus on technology and having some emphasis on entrepreneurship, we can hopefully lay the foundation for the next generation of great ideas and new business to develop," Yang said. Salisbury said the Yahoo! Founders professor will be chosen at a later date, and will probably be a specialist in computer science or electrical engineering. "Jerry and Dave's generosity is a model for other successful entrepreneurs," Engineering Dean John Hennessy said. "It follows in the footsteps of some of Stanford's most important benefactors." Filo and Yang, who both received master's degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford in 1990, started Yahoo! (located on the World Wide Web at http://www.yahoo.com) as a hobby while they were working on their doctorates in the university's Computer Systems Laboratory. They began the project by compiling a list of interesting Internet sites. And as their project grew, Yahoo! emerged as the first on-line directory for the World Wide Web. The pair converted Yahoo! into a customized database designed to meet the needs of the thousands of people who began to use the service to search the Internet regularly. They also developed software to locate, identify and edit material on websites. In less than a year, the website became so popular that it had to be removed from its original location on a Stanford computer. In early 1995, Netscape Communications co-founder Marc Andressen allowed Filo and Yang to move their files to Netscape's larger computers in Mountain View, Calif. Yahoo! became even more popular once Netscape put a link to the directory on its web browsers, prompting Filo and Yang to set up their own company, Yahoo! Inc. Salisbury said the company reported revenues of $8,551,000 for the fourth quarter of 1996, a 55 percent increase over the $5,515,000 revenues for the third quarter. "Our relationship with the Silicon Valley is a unique asset both to the Valley and to Stanford," Hennessy said. "Of all the startups that have come from the Silicon Valley, Yahoo! has probably affected more people in less time that any other."