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 portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

with classmate 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 and education

Filo was born in

Wisconsin Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...

and was raised in Moss Bluff, Louisiana. He earned a B.S. degree in

computer engineering Computer engineering (CE, CoE, or CpE) is a branch of engineering specialized in developing computer hardware and software. It integrates several fields of electrical engineering, electronics engineering and computer science. Computer engi ...

Tulane University The Tulane University of Louisiana (commonly referred to as Tulane University) is a private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by a cohort of medical doctors, it b ...

(through the Dean's Honor Scholarship) and an M.S. degree in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

in 1990 at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

Career

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

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, 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 ...

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 displayin ...

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 any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

s on the internet.

Personal life

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

Stanford Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth governor of and th ...

(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 founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

'' 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 Business duos Businesspeople in software Living people Web developers American computer programmers People from Lake Charles, Louisiana 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