At lunch today we were talking about trademarks and whether Yahoo! is a brand name or a generic term. Since it’s used in Chapter 1 of Gulliver’s Travels, it clearly pre-dates the web company. And the first use with an exclamation point probably comes from the Erasure song which was released in 1988 on The Innocents album.
We never quite sorted it out, but the discussion morphed into the history of the company. We wondered how many links there are still pointing at akebono.Stanford.Edu.
Now there’s one more. 🙂
“Celebration” by Kool & The Gang released in 1980 has the word “Yahoo!”, and almost definitely with an exclamation point. Not in the song title, but still amusing.
Speaking of Y! nostalgia, the downtown library in San Jose has (or had, about a year ago) an original copy of the Y! web guide book from when there were about 15 employees. It would be more amusing if it’d been there out of nostalgia, but alas it was one of their more computer books.
don’t forget “the original ya-hoo! baking company” at http://www.yahoocake.com/
they definitely sued at the right time..
Akebono
Michael Radwin wondered how many links still point to akebono.stanford.edu, which is the original home of Yahoo!. Well, it’s pretty easy to find out with AlltheWeb URL investigator tool. Now reading: Hacking Matter: Levitating Chairs, Quantum Mirages, …
why is it that nobody responds to my comments?
do you not believe me?
do you hate that i fake my email address?
do you have nothing to say?
i hate weblog comments. it’s a poor excuse for a newsgroup thread. weblog comments should be funneled into something that doesn’t die with the original blog entry.
There seems to be a much more active weblog comment community on jzawodn’s blog. Maybe you’d get a more passionate response there. By comparison, I have a much smaller readership (Dave Winer has never linked to me).
I occasionally reply to comments when I get them via email, but it’s hard to reply to a fake email address.