Born in Taiwan, Jerry Yang graduated from Piedmont Hills High School in San Jose, California. Yang and David Filo created the search engine Yahoo! The name comes from the slang term for an uncouth or unsophisticated rural Southerner, but it is also drawn from the fictitious beings in Gulliver’s Travels. Yahoo! began as a web portal that acted as a directory of sites, but its instant success and business potential made it one of the most popular search engines of today. Roughly 700 million people visit Yahoo! websites each month, proving that these so-called “yahoos” are a force to be reckoned with.
Did you know: Jerry Yang only knew one word of English when he arrived in the United States but became fluent in just three years!