Google and Yahoo! History of the Two

¶ … Google and Yahoo!

History of the two companies

Yahoo was created in January 1994 by, Jerry Yang and David Filo, two Stanford graduate students. They created a website called "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web." It was a page with links to other websites created in a hierarchical manner. In April 1994, it was renamed as 'Yahoo!'. "Filo and Yang said they selected the name because they liked the word's general definition, "rude, unsophisticated, and uncouth." (Diffen.com, 2013) By April 1996, Yahoo went public raising $33.8 million dollars, by selling 2.6 million shares at $13 each. Started as a search engine the company went on to many businesses in communications, and e-mail taking over rocket mail and making it Yahoo! Mail. (Diffen.com, 2013)

The company now provides information on stock markets, blog space and paid hosting and free utilities. It has incorporated all available services into its offerings and is researching more options. Google was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and became an incorporated as a privately held company on September 7, 1998. It made the debut as a company in August 19, 2004, raising $1.67 billion, and was the best search engine -Google with the largest market share. Google went on to add other internet services, which was the philosophy behind acquiring Orkut and You Tube. (Diffen.com, 2013)

The success of Google was by selling advertisements associated with the help of keywords. Keywords were sold based on a combination of price bid and clicks. (Diffen.com, 2013)

What do they have in common?

Both are internet-based companies and their base is the popular search engines to which they have added more and more features. The companies are vying with one another in getting the clientele to stick with them. They believe in the volumes generated by the advertisements and also by using of other firms of the paid services. The companies are both into web hosting and cloud services. Additionally Yahoo provides market information and trade results, and Google in turn has free and paid blogging. Both create revenue from the advertisements and participation of the companies and public in their services. Both have extensive research and development networks. They have created tangible assets to back up the progress of the company. Both are public limited companies and are on the NASDQ.

How are the businesses different? This will take some deep digging

Google has grown out of the 'search engine' tag, while yahoo still maintains the basic search engine flavour. The differences are in the innovation created by Google over yahoo. Google seems to have expanded the market, and growth rate is determined by the market size which in turn is determined by market demand. And they usually tend to create a ripple cost effect such that the firm must continuously grow just to maintain the current status quo. On the other hand Yahoo can be steady with lesser growth rate if it continues to optimize what it originally was- Its search features.

What are their sales per square foot?

To answer the question, in this case the sq. foot of the holding has no immediate relevance to the revenue generated from the internet, and hence to see their income and profit and profitability the financial statements are viewed first. According to the profit and loss statements, there is Research and Development costs for both companies were similar with yahoo spending 390 millions USD and Google 370 millions as of 2006, with the cash flow. The cash flow as different from 2005 to 2007. (Cybion, n. d.)

"Yahoo's investing cash remain negative from (821,930) millions USD to (572,502) millions so was Google's cash been ranged between (3,358,193) millions USD and (6,899,150) millions. These negative values and differences are mostly due to short-term financial investments." (Cybion, n. d.) Both had invested excessively in U.S. govt debts, and produced large amounts of interest. Both these companies seem thus to share the same financial principles.

Why are they different?

The work philosophy of the companies are different, Google goes with the idea of becoming -- everything to every one -- with rigid frames of operations and has been the first to enter the cloud computing services. On the other hand Yahoo grows with the demand of the customers and caters to clientele that often have both yahoo and Google accounts. Yahoo still remains the search and e-mail company basically while Google has graduated out of that and has become an information company.

How much per square foot do they pay in rent?

Both companies have their own HQ but have outsourced some of their activities abroad. Rental expenses for these can only be guessed at.

Do they own the land?

The Google Inc. World Headquarters is located at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkwayv Mountain View, CA 94043 called the Mountain View Googleplex and the owned HQ and subsidiary work places has on-site doctor, free shuttle service, financial planning classes, and frequent holiday parties. (Farfan, 2013)

Provide details on the background / education of their founders and current leaders

Jerry Yang and David Filo, founders of Yahoo were Stanford graduate students. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are PhD holders from at Stanford University and from the same university the need for search engines prompt them to create the corporation. (Diffen.com, 2013)

What was the business philosophy of the founders?

The philosophy of both groups at the time of creating the company was the same: provide a system of searching the internet. Profit motive was absent at the time because they were students and were trying to solve a problem. As the system grew the opportunity converted it into a business system. The difference between both is that the Google founders had a distinct advantage of education over the founders of Yahoo.

What is the business / management philosophy of the current leaders?