From 14 subjects
to “Stories for you”.

The October 17, 1996 capture is mostly that list. Many subjects carry a small [Xtra!] tag, and every line ends in three dots that lead deeper. A row of round icons frames the red logo, labeled NEW, COOL, RANDOM and ADD URL.

Jerry Yang and David Filo started Yahoo at Stanford in 1994 as a directory, Jerry and Dave's Guide to the World Wide Web.^[1][13] It ran on two student workstations, akebono and konishiki, named after Hawaiian sumo wrestlers.^[14] Two years later the directory still fills most of the page.

The first line under the logo links to Yahoo! Deutschland. The last two lines link to Yahoo! New York, Japan and San Francisco, Yahoo! Shop, Yahoo! Internet Life and a kids' guide called Yahooligans!. Yahoo later described it as a version of Yahoo! for children aged 7 to 12.^[12]

By June 14, 1997 the list has two columns and the top of the page carries headlines: Bulls Win Title, U.S. Open, McVeigh Sentenced to Death and Don't Forget Dad. Arts has become Arts and Humanities.

The small print adds Beatrice's Web Guide, a Random Yahoo! Link and, at the very bottom, How to Include Your Site. That is how a directory grew: the page invited you to submit a site for a subject.

In June 1998 the services climb above the directory. Yahoo! Mail offers free @yahoo.com email, a link for World Cup 98 sits under the logo, and Yahoo! Games promises you can play online chess, backgammon, bridge, blackjack and more... Yahoo Mail grew out of RocketMail, which Yahoo had bought in 1997.^[1] At the bottom a Visa card logo follows the words Smart Shopping with.

Ten months later the email promise is longer: free email for life. Next to it, Yahoo! Pager does instant messaging, and a banner says beep beep, Yahoo! Pager now works with chat.

Under the search box, Yahoo! Auctions has 1000's of items to bid on, and names four of them: Pokemon, Beanie Babies, video games, Furbys.

A new column on the right separates the news from the shopping. In the News starts with NATO - Serbia war. Under Marketplace, Charity Auctions raise money for the Kosovo relief effort. The Visa logo is still at the bottom, with a new line in front of it: Yahoo! prefers.

On June 26, 2000 Yahoo picked Google as its default web search provider, to sit next to its own directory.^[2] The company that would later be its rival in search was to supply Yahoo's web search results, with the integration expected within 30 days.

Our capture from ten days earlier shows the portal around that box. Under it, rows of links sort Yahoo's services into Shop, Media, Connect and Personal, from auctions and GeoCities to Messenger and bill pay. The fourteen subjects are still there, squeezed into the middle.

The search box doesn't say who answers it. None of our 2000–2003 captures mentions Google anywhere in its HTML.

June 2001 sells Personal Email at you@claim-your-name.com and reminds you that Father's Day is June 17th. The 2002 capture is dated June 6, yet its top line still offers Send Holiday Greetings for Easter, Passover, next to a Tax Center.

In the middle of the 2002 page, a box with pink hearts tries matchmaking: Make a Connection with Yahoo! Personals, with two drop-downs set to Man and Woman.

Near the bottom of both pages, a line lists other ways in. In June 2001 it reads Access Yahoo! via: Pagers, PDAs and Web-enabled Phones. In 2002 it ends with Voice (1-800-My-Yahoo): you could reach the portal from a pager, or call it. The number was already on the homepage in March 2001.^[15] By 2003 the pagers are off the list, and DSL and Dial-up are on it.

In June 2003 the search box gets a band of its own, Search the Web:, and a line under it: New! Search Shortcuts - Maps, Weather, Dictionary, more.

The fourteen subjects leave the middle of the page. They sit lower down now, in a box labeled Web Site Directory - Sites organized by subject, with a link to Suggest your site. The badge under them has changed too. It says powered by and shows the hp logo, where 2001 and 2002 had powered by COMPAQ.

Yahoo began replacing Google's results with its own search technology in February 2004.^[3] The June capture puts Yahoo! Search above the box with Popular terms: Ronald Reagan, Lindsay Lohan, NBA, NASCAR, Dictionary, and a drop-down lets you search on the Web, in Images, Yellow Pages, News or Products.

Near the end of the HTML is a comment: p13.www.scd.yahoo.com uncompressed Tue Jun 15 17:12:02 PDT 2004. It names a Yahoo server and a time, down to the second. The note stays in the code until our 2022 capture, though the names change.

By June 2005 the subjects have lost their subtopics. A small box on the first screen, Yahoo! Web Directory, lists twelve single words, from Arts to Society. Directory has become one option in the search drop-down, between Video and Local. The rest of the page belongs to services, a box called Buzz Log - What the world is searching for and a large GM ad: For the first time in history everyone in America gets the GM Employee Discount.

June 2006 adds Answers to the icons above the logo and Yahoo! Tech: Gear to go in a green bar, with camera how-tos, MP3 tips and PDA Basics. The directory box is still there, a little lower, and Society has been swapped for Culture. It is the last of our captures to name the directory on the page. When the next usable capture comes, the word is gone.

The usable 2009 capture is from September 1. A dark blue bar across the top says Take a sneak peek at the new Yahoo! homepage, with a yellow Try it now! button.

Under it, a column of Yahoo services runs down the left side, each with a small colored icon, starting with Answers, Autos and Finance. Tabs above the main story read Featured, Entertainment, Sports and Life, and the lead is Best & worst pizzas for you.

Next to the My Yahoo! tab is a third one, Y! Netherlands, and the code lets you limit a search to Netherlands only. Yahoo seems to have placed this visitor, the archive's crawler, in the Netherlands.

The code also has a Page Options menu with six colors, Ocean, Tangerine, Violet, Oyster, Grass and Pink, plus Switch to narrow layout, and a link to Get Internet Explorer 8.

In June 2010 the logo is purple. TODAY - June 15, 2010 heads a big photo story, 'Touchdown Jesus' destroyed by lightning, beside a TRENDING NOW list of ten searches. On the left, MY FAVORITES lists Yahoo sites with an icon each, plus two outsiders: Twitter, and under RECOMMENDED, Facebook. Yahoo's opt-in redesign of July 2009 let people add outside services like Facebook and eBay to that list (reported).^[4]

The layout holds for two more years. June 2011 leads with The perils of drinking soda every day, and its Trending Now runs from Gene Simmons to Weiner doll. June 2012 has The worst restaurants to work for below photos of a McDonald's and an Olive Garden.

Both years hide a joke in the logo. An image map traces the exclamation mark in two pieces, the stroke and the dot, and gives each the alt text YahooOOOooo!. Click either one and the page calls callYodel(), which loads a Flash file named yodel.swf, one pixel square. The 2009 code already has a loadYodel function. The yodel stayed part of the brand: in March 2015, 3,432 people yodeled together in Sunnyvale for Yahoo's 20th anniversary, a Guinness World Record.^[9]

On February 20, 2013 Yahoo launched a personalized news homepage that keeps scrolling.^[5] Our June capture shows it: a wide photo carousel, tabs for All Stories, News, Local, Entertainment and Sports over one long column, and a short list of Yahoo sites with colored icons on the left. Trending Now includes Loch Ness monster and Nap nanny recliners.

The logo on top is still the purple wordmark of our 2010 capture, and it has weeks left. For a month the site showed a different wordmark every day. On September 5, 2013 Yahoo unveiled the new one.^[6]

Yahoo's chief executive, Marissa Mayer, wrote that she designed it over a summer weekend with Yahoo's design team and an intern, Max Ma.^[7] Weeks of further work followed, she wrote.

Small print: the code's sign-in box offers Yahoo! or Facebook and adds We don't post anything without your permission.

By June 2014 the new logo is in place, thin purple capitals. A purple bar of links runs across the very top: Home, Mail, News, Sports, Finance, Weather, Games and more. On the left, under the list of sites, a phone sells An endless stream of personalized news with a Get the App button. The browser tab has lost its exclamation mark too. In our 2014–2020 captures the page title is just Yahoo.

That September, Yahoo said it would retire its original web directory at the end of 2014 (reported).^[8] On the homepage it had been gone for years.

June 2015 makes the hero bigger, Jeb Bush kicks off 2016 presidential bid, and a big ad on the right says YAHOO! FOOD and Check it out. Two small things are new. A purple button on the left asks you to make Yahoo your homepage. And the right end of the top bar says Upgrade to the new Firefox.

October 2016 redraws the page with more white space, a larger logo and a blue search button with a magnifying glass. The top bar's last item now reads Install the new Firefox ». On the right, a phone advertises Yahoo Mail: Faster, beautiful and intuitive.

In June 2017 the left column of sites gives way to a row of links under the search box: Mail, News, Finance, Sports, Politics, Celebrity, TV, Style. Stories show their audience, 648 people reacting. In June 2018 World Cup joins the row and the scoreboard shows Spain and Portugal at 3–3. June 2019 brings a large dark hero with the headline 'How could you possibly see this as acceptable?'.

One thing doesn't change. The Mail ad with Faster, beautiful and intuitive. is on the right of all four captures, 2016 to 2019, in the same spot.

A lowercase logo arrives with the 2019 identity by Pentagram: yahoo! in bold purple letters, the y and the exclamation mark tilted at the same 22.5 degrees. Pentagram's names for the purples include grape jelly, hulk pants and malbec.^[10]

In June 2020 the logo sits under a purple banner, Make Yahoo Your Homepage, with Get and No, thanks. The menu names the year: Coronavirus, Black Lives Matter, StayHome.

June 2021 keeps the banner and changes the menu to COVID-19 and Yahoo Plus. The lead story is Senate passes bill to create a new national holiday, with fireworks over a city. In this replay a wide empty band sits between the menu and the story. The browser title grows a list this year: Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos.

In June 2022 the feed gets a heading, Stories for you, and a row of topic buttons with check marks: Politics, US News, Celebrity, Lifestyle, Sports, Business, Entertainment. A blue tip points at them.

In 1996 Yahoo chose the subjects and you picked one. Here you switch off the ones you don't want.

June 2023 leads with Several U.S. agencies hit in global cyberattack. The Trending Now box has a second tab, Father's Day, and the weather and a scoreboard fill the right column. The Make Yahoo Your Homepage line is in the code for the last time in our captures.

On June 13, 2024 Yahoo announced a new homepage for people who opted in, with top news, personalized recommendations and real-time trends.^[11] Our October 2024 capture has a slim header: a small logo, a rounded search box that says Search the web, and links for just News, Finance, Sports and More, then Mail and Sign in. The homepage request is gone from the code.

April 2025 leads with U.S. consumers hit the brakes on dining, travel amid tariff fears. Our March 2026 capture keeps the same header, and under the lead story the feed is still Stories for you.

The subjects haven't quite vanished. They moved into a closed menu. The 2026 code lists sections and subsections again, and its health topics go as far as Hair loss and Foot health.

In 1996 Health had four subtopics: Medicine, Drugs, Diseases, Fitness. The search box from 1996 is still at the top. It says Search the web now.