David Filo, a native of Moss Bluff, Louisiana, attended Tulane
University’s undergraduate program in computer engineering.
He was a scholarship student and a Dean’s Honor Scholar while at Tulane.
He graduated summa cum laude and was named Tulane’s “top graduate” of
1988.
He later enrolled in Stanford’s master’s program in electrical
engineering. Completing his master’s degree, he opted to stay
at Stanford and try for his PhD in electrical engineering.
One day David Filo and his friend Jerry Yang were bored, so they
decided to play around with the Internet. They found some good
Websites. But there was so much information on the Internet! So
they developed a way to find and keep track of all their
favorite Websites. First they had long lists of Websites.
Later on, they separated them into categories. Filo and Yang
wrote software using Tcl/TK and Perl scripts that allowed them to
group their bookmarks into subject areas. Even these started to
become big again, so they separated the categories into more
groups. In the beginning, they called their new system is
"Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web." Later, David and
Jerry changed the name of "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide
Web" to "Yahoo!".
In April 1995, Yahoo!". was funded by Sequoia Capital with an investment
of about $2 million and it went on public in April 1996, it headquarter
is situated in Sunnyvale, CA.
Filo serves as a key technologist, directing the technical operations
behind the company's global network of Web properties. He is
credited with helping build Yahoo! into the world's most highly
trafficked Web site and one of the Internet's most recognized
brands.
David Robert Filo
