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/The first search engines

The first search engines

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The first search engines

(upbeat music) - In 1993, the internet was open to the public, and soon it exploded. By the mid-1990s, thousands of new pages appeared every day, and that number was only growing. This created a new kind of problem. I mean, how do you find anything in this ever-expending sea of information? In 1994, two Stanford PhD students, Jerry Yang and David Filo, founded the search engine Yahoo, to address this issue, but they needed money.

So a year later, they arranged to meet with Japanese billionaire, Masayoshi Son, also known as the Bill Gates of Japan. (gong clangs) - They were looking to raise $5 million for their next startup, but Son has other plans. He offers to invest a full $100 million instead. That's 20 times more than what the founders asked for. So Jerry Yang declines saying, "We don't need that much," but Son disagrees, "Jerry, everyone needs $100 million."

(Son laughs) Before the founders get a chance to respond, Son jumps in again and asks, "Who are your biggest competitors?" "Excite and lycos," the pair respond. Son orders his associate to write those names down. And then he says, "If you don't let me invest in Yahoo, I will invest in one of them and I'll kill you." See, Son had realized something. None of the leading search engines at the time had any superior technology.

They didn't have a technological advantage over the others. They all just ranked pages by how often a search term appears on a given page. So the battle for the number one search engine would be decided by who could attract the most users, who could spend the most on marketing. - [Announcer 1] Lycos, go get it. - [Announcer 2] Get Lycos, or get lost. - [Announcer 3] This is revolution. (upbeat funky music) ♪ Yahoo ♪ - [Derek] And marketing required a lot of money, money that Son had, so he could decide who won the war.

Yahoo's founders realized they were left with no real choice but to accept Son's investment. - [Speaker] So here we are, right in the middle of Yahoo. - [Derek] And within four years, Yahoo became the most popular site on the planet. - [Reporter] In the time it takes to say this sentence, Yahoo will answer 79,000 information requests worldwide, the two men are now worth $120 million each. ♪ Yahoo ♪ - But Yahoo had a critical weakness.