Google rival born in students' breaks

The history of Yahoo is another of those everyday stories of internet multi-billionaires who came up with their world-changing idea in their downtime as students.

While at California's Stanford University, Jerry Yang and David Filo began organising their website interests on a most-hit basis and Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web search engine was born in 1994.

It later became Yahoo, named after the definition given to the word in Swift's Gulliver's Travels as something or someone that is "rude, unsophisticated or uncouth".

After attracting attention from Silicon Valley venture capitalists, the business floated in 1996 and its shares soared in the dot-com bubble through to 2001.

As internet stock values plummeted when the bubble burst, Yahoomoved to hoover up rival search engines in its never-ending rivalry with Google.

However, 2007 saw the company rocked by plunging revenues, most recently of 23% on the back of falling advertising income, and the announcement only this week of 1000 job cuts.

After speculation last year that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp may launch a takeover bid, longstanding chief executive Terry Semel stood down in favour of Yang, who promised "profound changes" at the company. He quit the board today.