David Robert Filo (born April 20, 1966) is an American billionaire businessman and the co-founder of

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present), Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds ma ...

with Jerry Yang. His Filo Server Program, written in the C programming language, was the server-side software used to dynamically serve variable web pages, called Filo Server Pages, on visits to early versions of the Yahoo! website.

Early life

Filo earned a B.S. degree in

computer engineering Computer engineering (CoE or CpE) is a branch of electrical engineering and computer science that integrates several fields of computer science and electronic engineering required to develop computer hardware and software. Computer enginee ...

Tulane University Tulane University, officially the Tulane University of Louisiana, is a private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by seven young medical doctors, it turned into a comprehensive pu ...

(through the

Dean's Honor Scholarship Tulane University, officially the Tulane University of Louisiana, is a private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by seven young medical doctors, it turned into a comprehensive pub ...

) and an M.S. degree in 1990 at Stanford University.

Career

In February 1994, he co-created with Jerry Yang an

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...

website called "Jerry and David'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 Filo and Yang realized the business potential and co-founded Yahoo! Inc. Yahoo! started off as a

web portal A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displa ...

with a web directory providing an extensive range of products and services for various online activities. Yahoo was one of the pioneers of the early Internet era in the 1990s. It is still one of the leading internet brands and, due to partnerships with telecommunications firms, is one of the most visited

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikip ...

s on the internet.

Personal life

Filo is married to photographer and teacher Angela Buenning, a graduate of

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

(1993) and Berkeley (1999). They have one child, and live in Palo Alto, California. In 2005, he gave $30 million to his alma mater,

, for use in its School of Engineering. The Filos have been major benefactors of both Stanford, especially its schools of sustainability and education, and Berkeley, primarily its graduate school of journalism. As of September 2019, ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

'' estimated Filo to be worth $4.3 billion, ranking him the 379th-richest person in the world.

References

External links

MetroActive: A Couple of Yahoos

video {{DEFAULTSORT:Filo, David 1966 births American computer businesspeople American billionaires Businesspeople in software Living people Web developers Computer programmers People from Lake Charles, Louisiana People from Wisconsin Stanford University alumni Tulane University alumni Yahoo! employees American technology company founders Businesspeople from Wisconsin 20th-century American businesspeople 21st-century American businesspeople Directors of Yahoo! People from Moss Bluff, Louisiana