My Yahoo!

The first time I ever heard about Yahoo! was on the phone from a guy in Newfoundland. I was working at the PEI Crafts Council at the time, and we had an early Internet project on the go; as a result, I spent a lot of time on the phone talking to Internet people and crafts people. On the phone to St. John’s with a guy with feet in both worlds, he used the phrase “I Yahooed for it…”. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I played along. When I got off the phone, I asked around, and this is close to what I found [thanks to Jason Kottke for the link].

Yahoo! turns 10 years old this week. It’s amazing to think that it was once such an important and central part of my Internet experience — the Google of its day. I don’t think I’ve visited the Yahoo! website for 5 years; it became drenched with for-pay annoyances, and with Google, it became obvious that search trumped cataloging.