Yahoo!!

Yahoo! began as a student hobby and evolved into a global brand that has changed the way people communicate with each other, find and access information and purchase things. The two founders of Yahoo!, David Filo and Jerry Yang, Ph.D. candidates in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, started their guide in a campus trailer in February 1994 as a way to keep track of their personal interests on the Internet. Before long they were spending more time on their home-brewed lists of favorite links than on their doctoral dissertations. Eventually, Jerry and David's lists became too long and unwieldy, and they broke them out into categories. When the categories became too full, they developed subcategories ... and the core concept behind Yahoo! was born.

The Web site started out as "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" but eventually received a new moniker with the help of a dictionary. The name Yahoo! is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," but Filo and Yang insist they selected the name because they liked the general definition of a yahoo: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." Yahoo! itself first resided on Yang's student workstation, "Akebono," while the software was lodged on Filo's computer, "Konishiki" - both named after legendary sumo wrestlers.

Jerry and David soon found they were not alone in wanting a single place to find useful Web sites. Before long, hundreds of people were accessing their guide from well beyond the Stanford trailer. Word spread from friends to what quickly became a significant, loyal audience throughout the closely-knit Internet community. Yahoo! celebrated its first million-hit day in the fall of 1994, translating to almost 100 thousand unique visitors.

Due to the torrent of traffic and enthusiastic reception Yahoo! was receiving, the founders knew they had a potential business on their hands. In March 1995, the pair incorporated the business and met with dozens of Silicon Valley venture capitalists. They eventually came across Sequoia Capital, the well-regarded firm whose most successful investments included Apple Computer, Atari, Oracle and Cisco Systems. They agreed to fund Yahoo! in April 1995 with an initial investment of nearly $2 million

Google

Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin maxed out their credit cards for computers and office equipment, building Google's first data center in Larry's dorm. But since they needed more cash to move out of the dorm, the duo turned to an investor. Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems and friend of a Stanford faculty member, wrote a check for $100,000 to Google after only seeing a short demo.

Microsoft

Born into a family immersed in business and politics, William "Bill" Gates inherited quite a knack for running a business and managing people, which would ultimately lead him to a billion-dollar success. From an early point in his education, he was competitive, driven, and was striving to be on top.

This would prove to be the crucial ingredient in his ride to fame, success, and unimaginable wealth.


It was during his stay at Lakeside, a private school, that he first laid his hands on the tool that was to propel him to fame: the computer. Little did he know that computers would later on make his name known the world over.

Despite his attempt at education as a pre-law student at Harvard University, Bill Gates' fate was far too entwined with computers. He enrolled only to later on drop out, with the tempting challenge of rocking the computing world.

It was also there that he met Paul Allen, one of the first Microsoft programmers, who ventured into the computer business with him. Early on Bill Gates and Paul Allen studied and learned everything they could about those early computers and knew that they could take the world of computing to a different level.

As if destiny was playing a part in it all, Paul Allen came across a magazine that featured the Altair 8080, headlined as the World's First Microcomputer Kit. It was a golden opportunity that presented itself at just the right time, and having been born competitive and aggressive, Bill Gates immediately called MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), the Albuquerque - New Mexico company who manufactured the Altair and convinced them that they were working on a BASIC program that would work for their Altair computer - even though they did not yet have the software written!

It took them eight weeks, dividing the workload, to come up with a program.

Testing the program for the first time on the first Altair they had ever set eyes on, they were faced with a one-in-a-million chance, and they successfully closed a deal. At this point, Bill knew it was time and he dropped out of Harvard. Not long after that, Microsoft was born. This was in 1975.

1980 was the year that would finally bring the Microsoft name to the masses. IBM was on their way to creating their new personal computer and needed an Operating System for it. They had approached a leading It company at the time called Digital Research but could not get a contract that both parties could agree on.

By this time they had heard of Bill Gates and so met up with Microsoft to discuss the creation of an Operating System for their new PC.

For this contract, Microsoft negotiated a license for a "clone" of the dominant operating system at the time: CP/M (the clone was called 86-DOS because it was designed to run on the Intel 8086 processor) from a company called Seattle Computer Products. It cost $25,000 and they then re-licensed it to IBM.

IBM later renamed it to PC-DOS.

Microsoft then acquired all rights to 86-DOS Operating System for only $50,000 from Seattle Computer Products in July, 1981, shortly before IBM released the PC. he then went on to create his own Operating System from the 86-DOS Operating System and called it MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System)

Bill Gates managed to convince IBM to let him retain the rights to MS-DOS and to sell it separately from the IBM personal computers with its PC-DOS. It was this wise business move that made him a computer tycoon up until now, earning huge amounts of money from the licensing of the MS-DOS.

Because of its history, MS-DOS was the key to the growth of Microsoft. License earnings funded the company's further efforts. They released later versions of the system, and were intent on upgrading and improving it for a while. The interest, however, in graphical user interface or GUI, prompted them to create an add-on to MS-DOS in 1985 called "Windows".

This marked the birth of the Windows operating system. Initially designed to run on top of MS-DOS, it allowed more user options such as multitasking, installation of devices, and to run applications for longer periods of time.

Finally, Windows became a world wide Operating System, and gave birth to a continuous stream of improvements and updates that finally brought to life the operating systems most of the world uses today.

After the release of Windows NT in 1993 version, there soon followed the "home user" version called Windows 95.

Then came Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows ME or Millennium Edition.

More recently, Whistler, or more popularly known as Windows XP became a huge hit, and Microsoft progressed on with Windows Vista.

Work has now begun on the replacement for Vista... make sure you have signed up for my newsletter below and I will keep you updated on its progress as Microsoft release information that I can share...

More info on the early years of Microsoft operating systems be found at:



http://www.microsoft.com/windows/WinHistoryDesktop.mspx

Microsoft

http://globaltechcentre.50webs.com/thumb/microsoft.jpg
Born into a family immersed in business and politics, William "Bill" Gates inherited quite a knack for running a business and managing people, which would ultimately lead him to a billion-dollar success. From an early point in his education, he was competitive, driven, and was striving to be on top.

This would prove to be the crucial ingredient in his ride to fame, success, and unimaginable wealth.


It was during his stay at Lakeside, a private school, that he first laid his hands on the tool that was to propel him to fame: the computer. Little did he know that computers would later on make his name known the world over.

Despite his attempt at education as a pre-law student at Harvard University, Bill Gates' fate was far too entwined with computers. He enrolled only to later on drop out, with the tempting challenge of rocking the computing world.

It was also there that he met Paul Allen, one of the first Microsoft programmers, who ventured into the computer business with him. Early on Bill Gates and Paul Allen studied and learned everything they could about those early computers and knew that they could take the world of computing to a different level.

As if destiny was playing a part in it all, Paul Allen came across a magazine that featured the Altair 8080, headlined as the World's First Microcomputer Kit. It was a golden opportunity that presented itself at just the right time, and having been born competitive and aggressive, Bill Gates immediately called MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), the Albuquerque - New Mexico company who manufactured the Altair and convinced them that they were working on a BASIC program that would work for their Altair computer - even though they did not yet have the software written!

It took them eight weeks, dividing the workload, to come up with a program.

Testing the program for the first time on the first Altair they had ever set eyes on, they were faced with a one-in-a-million chance, and they successfully closed a deal. At this point, Bill knew it was time and he dropped out of Harvard. Not long after that, Microsoft was born. This was in 1975.

1980 was the year that would finally bring the Microsoft name to the masses. IBM was on their way to creating their new personal computer and needed an Operating System for it. They had approached a leading It company at the time called Digital Research but could not get a contract that both parties could agree on.

By this time they had heard of Bill Gates and so met up with Microsoft to discuss the creation of an Operating System for their new PC.

For this contract, Microsoft negotiated a license for a "clone" of the dominant operating system at the time: CP/M (the clone was called 86-DOS because it was designed to run on the Intel 8086 processor) from a company called Seattle Computer Products. It cost $25,000 and they then re-licensed it to IBM.

IBM later renamed it to PC-DOS.

Microsoft then acquired all rights to 86-DOS Operating System for only $50,000 from Seattle Computer Products in July, 1981, shortly before IBM released the PC. he then went on to create his own Operating System from the 86-DOS Operating System and called it MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System)

Bill Gates managed to convince IBM to let him retain the rights to MS-DOS and to sell it separately from the IBM personal computers with its PC-DOS. It was this wise business move that made him a computer tycoon up until now, earning huge amounts of money from the licensing of the MS-DOS.

Because of its history, MS-DOS was the key to the growth of Microsoft. License earnings funded the company's further efforts. They released later versions of the system, and were intent on upgrading and improving it for a while. The interest, however, in graphical user interface or GUI, prompted them to create an add-on to MS-DOS in 1985 called "Windows".

This marked the birth of the Windows operating system. Initially designed to run on top of MS-DOS, it allowed more user options such as multitasking, installation of devices, and to run applications for longer periods of time.

Finally, Windows became a world wide Operating System, and gave birth to a continuous stream of improvements and updates that finally brought to life the operating systems most of the world uses today.

After the release of Windows NT in 1993 version, there soon followed the "home user" version called Windows 95.

Then came Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows ME or Millennium Edition.

More recently, Whistler, or more popularly known as Windows XP became a huge hit, and Microsoft progressed on with Windows Vista.

Work has now begun on the replacement for Vista... make sure you have signed up for my newsletter below and I will keep you updated on its progress as Microsoft release information that I can share...

More info on the early years of Microsoft operating systems be found at:



http://www.microsoft.com/windows/WinHistoryDesktop.mspx

Apple computer - Co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak

Co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, both college dropouts, began their partnership by selling boxes they built that allowed for free long-distance phone calls. In 1976, they started working on another box, the Apple I computer. Jobs and Wozniak sold their most valuable possessions, a van and two calculators, raising $1,300 to fund the company.

You Tube - founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen

AN FRANCISCO — Jawed Karim doesn't begrudge the spotlight on YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen this week after they negotiated the video website's sale to Google for about $1.7 billion.
After all, Hurley and Chen took the germ of an idea — famously hatched at a San Francisco dinner party — and turned it into a Silicon Valley company that became a global phenomenon in less than a year.

Still, Karim, 27, would like more people to know that he was YouTube's third co-founder — and, he says, the guy who first suggested the idea that became the company. "It took the three of us," he said Wednesday.

The story of YouTube's birth, like that of many companies, is more nuanced than the one widely known. In many accounts, Hurley and Chen take center stage. If he's mentioned at all, Karim is cast in a bit part, ending when he assumed an advisory role after leaving YouTube last year for graduate computer studies at Stanford.

Other entrepreneurs lost their place in history, too, says James Hoopes, a business history professor at Babson College near Boston. Historians and journalists "like to write about personalities," so they often focus on individuals, brushing aside other co-founders. Popular wisdom, for example, says Bill Gates and Sam Walton single-handedly started Microsoft and Wal-Mart, respectively, but they were co-founders.

Karim says his idea for what became YouTube sprang from two very different events in 2004: Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction," during a Super Bowl show, and the Asian tsunami.

YouTube fizzled in an early version, Karim says: A dating site called Tune In Hook Up drew little interest. The founders later developed the current site, now broadcasting 100 million short videos daily on myriad subjects.

YouTube says Karim was part of the "core" team that developed the idea for the company and notes that he is listed as one of three founders on its website. "There's no question about that," spokeswoman Julie Supan says.

Karim is one of the company's biggest stockholders and is in line to get millions of dollars in Google shares when the deal announced Monday closes. He declined to reveal his stake, or the stakes of the other founders and venture-capital investors at Sequoia Capital.

Karim grew up in West Germany, and his family immigrated to Minnesota when Karim started high school. His Bangladeshi father is a chemist at 3M, and his German mother is a biochemistry research professor at the University of Minnesota. Karim got his bachelor's in computer science and engineering in 2004 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Hurley, 29, Chen, 28, and Karim met as early employees at PayPal, the payment service sold to eBay in 2002. The three, newly rich after leaving PayPal, talked about a start-up of their own, possibly a database venture, Karim says.

Then, early last year, Karim recalled the difficulty involved in finding and watching videos online of Jackson accidentally baring her breast during the Super Bowl show. The same was true with the many amateur videos made of that winter's devastating tsunami.

Karim says he proposed to Hurley and Chen that they create a video-sharing site. "I thought it was a good idea," Karim says.

The three agreed within a few days in February, then divided work based on skills: Hurley designed the site's interface and logo. Chen and Karim split technical duties making the site work. They later divided management responsibilities, based on strengths and interests: Hurley became CEO; Chen, chief technology officer.

Karim had already planned to resume computer studies, so he opted out of management and agreed to take a smaller ownership stake than the other two founders. He continued advising YouTube and a growing number of employees — now 67 — as Hurley and Chen took his "little spark" of an idea and turned it into a fire.

"My only interest was in helping the company get off the ground, implementing it, and raising money," he says. Hurley and Chen handled the Google talks; Karim says he signed off on the deal once details were reached.

Now in a two-year master's program, Karim says he's considering another start-up but declines to give details.

For now, he's basking in YouTube's success and its eye-popping sale price. "I definitely thought that this was a possible outcome," he says. "But I didn't think it was the most likely outcome."

Brainchild of "Orkut" Orkut Buyukkokten

Orkut was launched in January 2004 by the search company Google, the brainchild of Orkut Orkut Buyukkokten, a Turkish software engineer, developed it as an independent project while working at Google. In late June 2004, Affinity Engines filed suit against Google, claiming that Orkut Büyükkökten and Google based Orkut on inCircle code.

Orkut Buyukkokten is the founder of orkut..There is a story as how & why he started Orkut.Dont know how far it's true..but yes,it's interesting.
Orkut Buyukkokten had a crush in school when he was a kid.That gal was in his class. Later when they moved to high schools,he lost her.This separation only made Orkut Buyukkokten crazy & he started searching for her. He started Orkut just with the hope that he'll find his 10yrs old crush someday. A very close friend of his was the 2nd person to join in...& the chain grew longer & longer as we see Orkut today.
At the beginning,it was not under google. It's only in mid 2004 that it was accepted by google....