Inside Yahoo! Reinvention and the Road Ahead (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Looking back on Internet mania, one company stands out: Yahoo..." (more)
Key Phrases: portal wars, major media company, other portals, Time Warner, Wall Street, Jerry Yang (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...an accessible, interesting read for anybody interested in the story of one of the companies that shaped the internet as we know it today..." (www.freepint.com - Featured Book, 5 September 2002)

"...anyone who reads this book through...would benefit greatly from their enhanced knowledge of the subject..." (M2 Best Books, 11 September 2002)

"...anyone who reads this book through...would benefit greatly from their enhanced knowledge of the subject..." -- M2 Best Books, 11 September 2002

Product Description

Inside Yahoo!
Reinvention and the Road Ahead

"No company better reflects the zeitgeist of the Internet bubble than Yahoo!, which grew from a part-time hobby cataloging Web sites to a $130 billion media company to just another dot.com struggling to remake its business model–all within a span of seven years. Karen Angel walks readers through the company’s history, which is less about geeks and technology than it is about making technology less geeky (i.e., more accessible) to regular people. Along the way, the company’s founders, David Filo and Jerry Yang, learned many invaluable lessons. Inside Yahoo! is not only an interesting book but also an important one."
—Adam L. Penenberg, investigative journalist and coauthor of Spooked: Espionage in Corporate America

"Inside Yahoo! is a drama about people, but it also describes how Yahoo! the brand reflected the impact of the Internet. Initially perceived as a fad, it soon became a part of our lives so that now it is as hard for anyone to imagine life without Yahoo! as it is to imagine life without electricity. Yahoo! helped make the technology become invisible–like the Cheshire Cat."
—John Taysom, founder and Managing Partner, RVC Reuters Greenhouse Fund

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1st edition (April 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471007935
• ISBN-13: 978-0471007937
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #972,414 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A competent job, but lacks real insight, November 24, 2002

By	Diego Banducci (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Like many other writers about technology companies, Karen Angel has simply read a lot of newspaper and magazine articles about the company, interviewed some knowledgeable outsiders (key insiders did not cooperate with her) and organized the resulting material in chronological sequence. If, like I, you are interested in learning the basic facts about Yahoo!, this book will suffice, but don't expect anything in the way of new revelations or searching analysis.

What comes across is a group of relatively bright young computer nerds who happened to be in the right place at the right time, decided that they were the Christ, and imploded from their own greed and hubris, professing all the while their personal integrity. Urrrppp!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting history, maybe a bit dusty., November 12, 2005

By	Jeremy Wadhams "VoIP Guru" (San Jose, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is basically the history of the 500 lb gorilla of the dot-com debacle. It follows Yahoo! from its birth in a Stanford trailer up through the pits of despair in late 2001.

I personally learned quite a bit about the forces that shaped this "walking contradiction" of a company. For me (as a geek) the most interesting part was the history of what technologies and services have been rolled into the Yahoo! brand, including early plays into VoIP as far back as 1998 and Yahoo!'s short fling with adult content.

Lost a star for the (I felt) boring profusion of financial figures every few pages. Yes, the difference between GAAP and pro-forma reporting blah blah and stock rating by Bleedle and Blarney was changed fom zzzzz.... Some of this pure finance speak is obviously necessary to the story, since a lot of the action pivots on economic calamity. It just seemed that the book occasionally became the history of YHOO the stock instead of Yahoo! the company.

For "ancient history" (in Internet time) the book is a great resource. I'll still need something to fill in the gap between the ending of this book (the expectation at end of 2001 that Yahoo! would die, become irrelevant, or get acquired) through modern times. But taken for what it is, it's a handy reference.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Very Informative but lacks analysis, January 4, 2003

By	Prashanth Kumar (MN USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The author has used her sources effectively to delineate the Intenet boom and its subsequent fall, by describing Yahoo's growth from a Stanford trailer into a media company. She has captured the frenzy of the late 90's and takes the reader through the numerous accquisitions and investments in Silicon Valley. At the same time the book is an overkill with the excessive information provided and at times reads like an encyclopaedia with figures thrown in liberally. The fact that Yahoo hasn't cooperated with the author is evident in several places. Overall its a good read