Question 11: Who Wants to be an Internet Nerd!
Which website was launched first?
- eBay
- Yahoo
- Amazon
- PayPal
ANSWER
Yahoo (CORRECT) Yahoo was founded in January 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo, who were electrical engineering graduates at Stanford University. Originally named “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web, “ the website was renamed “Yahoo!” on April 1994. On April 12, 1996, Yahoo! had its initial public offering and raised $33.8 million by selling 2.6 million shares at the opening bid of $13 each. The company’s stock price rose rapidly during the dot-com bubble closed at an all-time high of $118.75 in 2000. However, after the dot-com bubble burst, it reached an all-time low of $8.11 in 2001.
eBay (WRONG) eBay was originally founded by Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb in September 1995. To test his new auction website, Omidyar offered a non-functional laser pointer that was destined for the trash bin. The laser pointer was posted for $1.00. For a week there were no takers. Then, bidders began driving the price of the broken laser pointer up to $14.83. Omidyar knew he had a business model that could work. Today, eBay has a market value of $26.67 Billion.
Amazon: (WRONG) Promoting itself as “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore,” Jeff Bezos launched Amazon in July 1995 almost a year and half after Yahoo. The idea of selling books online was new and it took a while to take off. In the beginning, Amazon paid other websites for links that resulted in book sales and used major book distributors and wholesalers to fill its orders. The company grew and went public on May 15, 1997 with its stock priced at $18 a share and a market capitalization of roughly $438 million. Amazon survived the dot-com bust and today Amazon has a market cap of $1.902 Trillion and Jeff Bezos has a net worth of $ 201 billion.
PayPal (WRONG). PayPal was founded in 1998 by Peter Theil and others under the name Confinity. In 2000, Elon Musk merged his x.com with Thiel’s Confinity to form PayPal. Musk briefly served as CEO of PayPal before he was ousted by the board in September 2000 and replaced with Thiel. In early 2002, PayPal’s stock went public through an initial public offering (IPO) and earned $70.2 million . In October 2002, eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion. As the largest shareholder at the time of the sale, Musk made $175 million. Today, Elon Musk has a net worth $210.2 billion and competes with Jeff Bezos from Amazon for the title, “The world’s richest person.”
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