could extend the length of time a user stayed at the
site. This allowed Yahoo! to create more revenue
from advertising. In 1997, it acquired the online
communications company Four11 and its mail ser-
vice, Rocketmail, which became Yahoo! Mail. By the
end of the 1990’s, Yahoo! had also acquired Classic-
Games.com, Yoyodyne Entertainment, Inc., Geo-
Cities, and eGroups to expand its range of services.
It also released Yahoo! Messenger in July of 1999.
Netscape Communications and America Online
both offered to buy Yahoo!, but the founders held
on to the company and saw the company’s stock rise
to over $100 per share by the end of the 1990’s.
Impact Yahoo! quickly became popular by helping
people to navigate the new and expanding technol-
ogy of the World Wide Web. The company was suc-
cessful enough to weather the dot-com bubble, and
the site remains one of the Internet’s most visited,
with the number of visits numbering in the billions
per day.
Further Reading
Angel, Karen.Inside Yahoo! Reinvention and the Road
Ahead. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002.
Livingston, Jessica.Founders at Work: Stories of Start-
ups’ Early Days. Berkeley, Calif.: Apress, 2007.
James J. Heiney
See also Amazon.com; America Online; Apple Com-
puter; Blogs; Computers; Dot-coms; E-mail; Instant
messaging; Internet; Microsoft; Project Gutenberg;
Search engines; Silicon Valley; World Wide Web.
Yamaguchi, Kristi
Identification American figure skater
Born July 12, 1971; Hayward, California
In 1992, Yamaguchi became the first Asian American
woman to win the Olympic gold medal for the United States.
She was also the amateur world figure skating champion in
1991 and 1992 and a four-time professional figure skating
champion, in 1992, 1994, 1996, and 1997.
Despite being born with a clubfoot condition, Kristi
Yamaguchi won distinction for the United States
with her figure skating. Her successes in the 1990’s
began with a first-place win at the Goodwill Games in
Tacoma, Washington. At the 1990 Skate America
Competition in Buffalo, New York, she earned first
place. Yamaguchi and her partner Rudy Galindo
won gold for the second straight year at the nationals
in Salt Lake City. However, Yamaguchi’s fourth-place
finish in singles at the 1990 World Figure Skating
Championships in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada,
and her fifth-place finish in pairs with Galindo made
the nineteen-year-old rethink competing in two
events.
Yamaguchi’s singles instructor Christy Kjarsgaard-
Ness had married and moved to Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada. Yamaguchi commuted across the border
for training until she decided to concentrate solely
on singles and move in with Kjarsgaard-Ness and her
husband in 1990. In 1991, Yamaguchi won her sec-
ond silver at the nationals in Minneapolis; Tanya
Harding won first place. At the 1991 world champi-
onships in Munich, Germany, Yamaguchi placed
first in singles, Harding took second, and Nancy
Kerrigan took third—a clean sweep for the United
States.
By early 1992, Yamaguchi was the reigning U.S.
and world female figure skater. She was eligible for
competition in the Olympics. On February 21, 1992,
at the Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, Yama-
guchi earned the gold medal in singles figure skat-
ing. She was now the greatest skater in the world—
only the fifth American woman to achieve the gold;
the last had been Dorothy Hamill in 1976. In 1993,
Yamaguchi turned professional. She joined the Stars
on Ice show and earned the largest salary in tour his-
tory at that time. The following year, she appeared as
herself in Disney’sD2: Mighty Ducks 2.Yamaguchi
won her fourth world professional title in 1997.
Wanting to inspire and encourage children,
Yamaguchi established the Always Dream Founda-
tion in 1996. The foundation assisted with after-
school programs, summer camps, and projects to aid
disabled and disadvantaged children, and paired
girls with positive mentors. Her Holiday Wishes
Christmas Program enabled selected children to re-
ceive gifts and to skate with professionals. Her phi-
lanthropy, her endorsements, and her work contin-
ued into the twenty-first century.Impact Kristi Yamaguchi became the first Asian
American woman both to win the Olympic gold for
the United States and to receive induction into
World Figure Skating Hall of Fame, in 1998. Al-
though as Japanese Americans her family members
had been forced into internment camps duringThe Nineties in America Yamaguchi, Kristi 953