Jerry Yang
Encyclopedia
Jerry Yang is an Internet
Entrepreneur
and the co-founder, former CEO, and "Chief Yahoo" of Yahoo! Inc
.
, Taiwan
on November 6, 1968, Yang moved to San Jose, California
at the age of ten with his mother and younger brother. His father died when Yang was two. He claimed that despite his mother being an English
teacher, he only knew one English word (shoe) on his arrival. Becoming fluent in three years, he was placed into an AP
English class.
Yang graduated from Sierramont Middle School
and Piedmont Hills High School
. Yang went on to earn a Bachelor of Science
and a Master of Science
in electrical engineering
from Stanford University
, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi
fraternity.
an Internet
website called "Jerry and Dave's Guide to the World Wide Web" consisting of a directory of other websites. It was renamed "Yahoo!" (an exclamation). Yahoo! became very popular, and Yang and Filo realized the business potential and co-founded Yahoo! Inc.
in April 1995. They took leaves of absence and postponed their doctoral programs indefinitely.
Yahoo! started off as a web portal
with a web directory providing an extensive range of products and services for online activities. It is now one of the leading internet brands and, due to partnerships with telecommunications firms, has the most trafficked network on the internet. In 1999, he was named to the MIT
Technology Review
TR100
as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.
On November 17, 2008, The Wall Street Journal
reported Jerry Yang would step down as CEO as soon as the company found a replacement. He had been criticized by many investors, including Carl Icahn
, for not increasing revenues and the Yahoo! stock price.
On January 13, 2009, Yahoo! named Silicon Valley veteran Carol Bartz
as its new chief executive, effectively replacing Yang. Yang regained his former position as "Chief Yahoo" and remains on Yahoo's board of directors.
woman who was raised in Costa Rica
. Yamazaki graduated from Stanford University with a degree in industrial engineering and is a director with the Wildlife Conservation Network
. The couple met at Stanford University in the Kyoto overseas program in 1992.
Yang is currently on the Board of Directors of Alibaba
, the Asian Pacific Fund, Cisco
, and Yahoo! Japan
, and is also on the Stanford University Board of Trustees.
, their alma mater, the bulk of which went to building the "Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building", a multi-disciplinary research, teaching and lab building, the first to be realized on Stanford's new Science and Engineering Quad.
in the arrest of Chinese journalist Shi Tao
by Chinese authorities.
While in China, Shi Tao used a Yahoo email address to notify a pro-democracy website that the Chinese government ordered the Chinese media not to cover the fifteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989
on June 4. Yahoo! provided the Chinese security agencies with the IP addresses of the senders, the recipients and the time of the message. Tao was subsequently convicted for "divulging state secrets abroad." Yang was heavily criticized and Reporters Without Borders
called Yahoo! "a Chinese police informant" whose actions led to the conviction of a journalist and writer.
Yang declared, "To be doing business in China, or anywhere else in the world, we have to comply with local law[s]." This was controversial, as critics claimed Yahoo! violated international law
as well as a 1989 decision by the U.S. Congress to prohibit U.S. companies from selling "crime control and detection" equipment or software to the Chinese Government.
The New York Times reported that political prisoner Wang Xiaoning
and other journalists had brought a civil suit against Yahoo for allegedly aiding and abetting the Chinese government which, it was claimed, resulted in torture that included beatings and imprisonment.
In October of 2007 Jerry Yang was summoned to Washington to answer for Yahoo's comments regarding its role in the arrests of Shi Tao and other journalists in China.
On November 14, 2007, Yahoo agreed to settle with affected Chinese dissidents, paying them undisclosed compensation. Yang stated, "After meeting with the families, it was clear to me what we had to do to make this right for them, for Yahoo, and for the future." In response, Democratic
Congressman Tom Lantos
, chairman of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, stated, "It took a tongue-lashing from Congress before these high-tech titans did the right thing and coughed up some concrete assistance for the family of a journalist whom Yahoo had helped send to jail. What a disgrace."
Jerry Yang wrote a letter to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
requesting her assistance in freeing the jailed dissidents. In addition, Yang established the Yahoo! Human Rights Fund, a fund to provide "humanitarian and legal support" to online dissidents. One of the first public projects of the fund was financing the establishment of the Laogai Museum
, a museum opened by noted Chinese dissident Harry Wu
to showcase China's laogai
penal system.
This change of heart has not been able to stop the chain of events that began with the arrest of jailed dissident Li Zhi
, which resulted in another lawsuit being filed against Yahoo on behalf of Plaintiffs Zheng Cunzhu and Guo Quan
who allege the loss of property and a garment business. The complaint alleges, "violation of international law including torture and prolonged detention, as well as unfair business practices, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment and assault."
in May 2008. Microsoft subsequently walked away from the negotiations. In November 2008, the shares were valued at only $14 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7712298.stm and Google
also decided not to proceed with commercial search advertising arrangements under negotiation influenced by the concerns voiced by the US authorities regarding the effect on competition in the market. On July 29, 2009, Yahoo! and Microsoft announced a search deal to compete against Google after Microsoft successfully launched its Bing
search service earlier in June.
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
Entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
and the co-founder, former CEO, and "Chief Yahoo" of Yahoo! Inc
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
.
Early life
Born in TaipeiTaipei
Taipei City is the capital of the Republic of China and the central city of the largest metropolitan area of Taiwan. Situated at the northern tip of the island, Taipei is located on the Tamsui River, and is about 25 km southwest of Keelung, its port on the Pacific Ocean...
, Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
on November 6, 1968, Yang moved to San Jose, California
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
at the age of ten with his mother and younger brother. His father died when Yang was two. He claimed that despite his mother being an English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
teacher, he only knew one English word (shoe) on his arrival. Becoming fluent in three years, he was placed into an AP
Advanced Placement Program
The Advanced Placement program is a curriculum in the United States and Canada sponsored by the College Board which offers standardized courses to high school students that are generally recognized to be equivalent to undergraduate courses in college...
English class.
Yang graduated from Sierramont Middle School
Sierramont Middle School
Sierramont Middle School is a three-year middle school located in East San Jose, California and is a part of the Berryessa Union School District. It is currently a California Distinguished School....
and Piedmont Hills High School
Piedmont Hills High School
Piedmont Hills High School is a comprehensive public four-year high school located in the Berryessa neighborhood of San Jose, California, USA. It is part of the East Side Union High School District and is the second highest performing school in the district, based on California's Academic...
. Yang went on to earn a Bachelor of Science
Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...
and a Master of Science
Master of Science
A Master of Science is a postgraduate academic master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is typically studied for in the sciences including the social sciences.-Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay:...
in electrical engineering
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...
from Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi
Phi Kappa Psi
Phi Kappa Psi is an American collegiate social fraternity founded at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania on February 19, 1852. There are over a hundred chapters and colonies at accredited four year colleges and universities throughout the United States. More than 112,000 men have been...
fraternity.
Career
While Yang studied in Electrical Engineering at Stanford, he co-created in April 1994 with David FiloDavid Filo
David Filo is an American businessman and the co-founder of Yahoo! with Jerry Yang.Until the company decided to switch to PHP, his Filo Server Program, written in the C programming language, was the server-side scripting software used to dynamically serve variable web pages, called Filo Server...
an Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
website called "Jerry and Dave's Guide to the World Wide Web" consisting of a directory of other websites. It was renamed "Yahoo!" (an exclamation). Yahoo! became very popular, and Yang and Filo realized the business potential and co-founded Yahoo! Inc.
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
in April 1995. They took leaves of absence and postponed their doctoral programs indefinitely.
Yahoo! started off as a web portal
Web portal
A web portal or links page is a web site that functions as a point of access to information in the World Wide Web. A portal presents information from diverse sources in a unified way....
with a web directory providing an extensive range of products and services for online activities. It is now one of the leading internet brands and, due to partnerships with telecommunications firms, has the most trafficked network on the internet. In 1999, he was named to the MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
Technology Review
Technology Review
Technology Review is a magazine published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as "The Technology Review", and was re-launched without the "The" in its name on April 23, 1998 under then publisher R. Bruce Journey...
TR100
TR35
The TR35 is an annual list published by MIT Technology Review magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35.Some of the most famous winners of the award include Larry Page and Sergey Brin , Linus Torvalds , Jerry Yang , Jonathan Ive , Mark Zuckerberg...
as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.
On November 17, 2008, The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
reported Jerry Yang would step down as CEO as soon as the company found a replacement. He had been criticized by many investors, including Carl Icahn
Carl Icahn
Carl Celian Icahn is an American business magnate and investor.-Biography:Icahn was raised in Far Rockaway, Queens, New York City, where he attended Far Rockaway High School. His father was a cantor, his mother was a schoolteacher...
, for not increasing revenues and the Yahoo! stock price.
On January 13, 2009, Yahoo! named Silicon Valley veteran Carol Bartz
Carol Bartz
Carol Ann Bartz is an American business executive, the former president and CEO of the Internet services company Yahoo!, and former chairman, president, and CEO at architectural and engineering design software company Autodesk....
as its new chief executive, effectively replacing Yang. Yang regained his former position as "Chief Yahoo" and remains on Yahoo's board of directors.
Personal life
Yang is married to Akiko Yamazaki, a JapaneseJapanese people
The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...
woman who was raised in Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....
. Yamazaki graduated from Stanford University with a degree in industrial engineering and is a director with the Wildlife Conservation Network
Wildlife Conservation Network
The Wildlife Conservation Network is a United States-based 5013 non-profit organization that partners with conservationists from around the world and is dedicated to developing community-based projects to help wildlife and people co-exist. WCN does this by providing their partners with capital,...
. The couple met at Stanford University in the Kyoto overseas program in 1992.
Yang is currently on the Board of Directors of Alibaba
Alibaba.com
Alibaba Group is a privately owned Hangzhou, China-based family of Internet-based businesses that includes online marketplaces that facilitate business-to-business international and domestic China trade, retail and payment platforms, a shopping search engine, and data-centric cloud computing...
, the Asian Pacific Fund, Cisco
Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, that designs and sells consumer electronics, networking, voice, and communications technology and services. Cisco has more than 70,000 employees and annual revenue of US$...
, and Yahoo! Japan
Yahoo! Japan
is a Japanese internet company formed as a joint venture between the American internet company Yahoo! and the Japanese internet company SoftBank. It is headquartered at Midtown Tower in the Tokyo Midtown complex in Akasaka, Minato, Tokyo.-History:...
, and is also on the Stanford University Board of Trustees.
Philanthropy
In February 2007, Jerry Yang and his wife gave USD $75 million to Stanford UniversityStanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, their alma mater, the bulk of which went to building the "Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building", a multi-disciplinary research, teaching and lab building, the first to be realized on Stanford's new Science and Engineering Quad.
China
Jerry Yang was criticized for a statement regarding the role of Yahoo!Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
in the arrest of Chinese journalist Shi Tao
Shi Tao
Shi Tao is a mainland Chinese journalist, writer and poet, who in 2005 was sentenced to imprisonment for 10 years for releasing a document of the Communist Party to an overseas Chinese democracy site after Yahoo! China provided his personal details to the Chinese government.-Brief history:Shi Tao...
by Chinese authorities.
While in China, Shi Tao used a Yahoo email address to notify a pro-democracy website that the Chinese government ordered the Chinese media not to cover the fifteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident in Chinese , were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People's Republic of China beginning on 15 April 1989...
on June 4. Yahoo! provided the Chinese security agencies with the IP addresses of the senders, the recipients and the time of the message. Tao was subsequently convicted for "divulging state secrets abroad." Yang was heavily criticized and Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
called Yahoo! "a Chinese police informant" whose actions led to the conviction of a journalist and writer.
Yang declared, "To be doing business in China, or anywhere else in the world, we have to comply with local law[s]." This was controversial, as critics claimed Yahoo! violated international law
International law
Public international law concerns the structure and conduct of sovereign states; analogous entities, such as the Holy See; and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond...
as well as a 1989 decision by the U.S. Congress to prohibit U.S. companies from selling "crime control and detection" equipment or software to the Chinese Government.
The New York Times reported that political prisoner Wang Xiaoning
Wang Xiaoning
Wang Xiaoning is a Chinese dissident from Shenyang who was arrested by authorities of the People's Republic of China for publishing controversial material online using his Yahoo! email account....
and other journalists had brought a civil suit against Yahoo for allegedly aiding and abetting the Chinese government which, it was claimed, resulted in torture that included beatings and imprisonment.
In October of 2007 Jerry Yang was summoned to Washington to answer for Yahoo's comments regarding its role in the arrests of Shi Tao and other journalists in China.
On November 14, 2007, Yahoo agreed to settle with affected Chinese dissidents, paying them undisclosed compensation. Yang stated, "After meeting with the families, it was clear to me what we had to do to make this right for them, for Yahoo, and for the future." In response, Democratic
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
Congressman Tom Lantos
Tom Lantos
Thomas Peter "Tom" Lantos was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from 1981 until his death, representing the northern two-thirds of San Mateo County and a portion of southwest San Francisco...
, chairman of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, stated, "It took a tongue-lashing from Congress before these high-tech titans did the right thing and coughed up some concrete assistance for the family of a journalist whom Yahoo had helped send to jail. What a disgrace."
Jerry Yang wrote a letter to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice is an American political scientist and diplomat. She served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, and was the second person to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush...
requesting her assistance in freeing the jailed dissidents. In addition, Yang established the Yahoo! Human Rights Fund, a fund to provide "humanitarian and legal support" to online dissidents. One of the first public projects of the fund was financing the establishment of the Laogai Museum
Laogai Museum
The Laogai Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C. which showcases human rights in the People's Republic of China, focusing particularly on the laogai, the Chinese prison system. The creation of the museum was spearheaded by Harry Wu, a well-known Chinese dissident who himself served 19 years in...
, a museum opened by noted Chinese dissident Harry Wu
Harry Wu
Harry Wu is an activist for human rights in the People's Republic of China. Now a resident and citizen of the United States, Wu spent 19 years in Chinese labor camps. In 1992, he founded the Laogai Research Foundation. In 1996 the Columbia Human Rights Law Review awarded Wu its second Award for...
to showcase China's laogai
Laogai
Laogai , the abbreviation for Láodòng Gǎizào , which means "reform through labor," is a slogan of the Chinese criminal justice system and has been used to refer to the use of prison labor and prison farms in the People's Republic of China . It is estimated that in the last fifty years more than...
penal system.
This change of heart has not been able to stop the chain of events that began with the arrest of jailed dissident Li Zhi
Li Zhi (dissident)
Li Zhi was sentenced to eight years imprisonment in December 2003 in the People's Republic of China for trying to join the Democracy Party of China, which is a banned organization in communist China, and for criticizing corruption...
, which resulted in another lawsuit being filed against Yahoo on behalf of Plaintiffs Zheng Cunzhu and Guo Quan
Guo Quan
Guo Quan is a Chinese human rights activist. He founded the China New Democracy Party. He is a State Owned Enterprise cadre, secretary of the Nanjing Economic Restructuring Commission and Nanjing People's Court cadre....
who allege the loss of property and a garment business. The complaint alleges, "violation of international law including torture and prolonged detention, as well as unfair business practices, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment and assault."
Microsoft
Yang was also criticized by shareholders for rejecting an offer of $33 a share from MicrosoftMicrosoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
in May 2008. Microsoft subsequently walked away from the negotiations. In November 2008, the shares were valued at only $14 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7712298.stm and Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
also decided not to proceed with commercial search advertising arrangements under negotiation influenced by the concerns voiced by the US authorities regarding the effect on competition in the market. On July 29, 2009, Yahoo! and Microsoft announced a search deal to compete against Google after Microsoft successfully launched its Bing
Bing
Bing is a web search engine from Microsoft.Bing may also refer to:* An onomatopœia of a bell sound* Bing cherry, a variety of cherry* Bing , Chinese flatbread* Bing , a German company that manufactured toys and kitchen utensils...
search service earlier in June.
External links
- Jerry Yang at Yahoo!Yahoo!Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
- Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki, donors to the Asian Pacific Fund foundation
- Jerry Yang and David Filo, Stanford University School of EngineeringStanford University School of EngineeringStanford University School of Engineering is one of the schools of Stanford University. The school has had eight deans; the current is James D. Plummer.-Previous Deans:# Theodore J. Hoover 1925-1936# Samuel B. Morris 1936-1944...
, 15-196 Annual Report - Mark & Marc Interview, 23 May 1995
- MetroActive: A Couple of Yahoos, 11 April 1996
- 1999 "Time Digital 50" snippet on Yang
- IT Conversations audio interview from the Web 2.0 conference, October 2004
- Jerry Yang, Yahoo and the Shi Tao case
- Yang's comment on the Shi Tao case, 17 September 2005