Yahoo!A B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZWY
Yahoo! Or in its early days, ‘Jerry’s Guide to
the World Wide Web’, renamed after ‘rude,
unsophisticated, uncouth’ and pretty despicable
characters in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels
(1776), on the grounds that it was an eye-catch-
ing title. Th e global internet service was the
creation of Jerry Yang and David Filo, Stanford
University graduate students. Its headquarters
are in Sunnyvale, California.
One of the most visited sites (3–4 billion
hits a day), Yahoo! provides a wide range of
online services, its development characterized
by diversification, acquisition and alliances
while at the same time fi ghting off bids to buy
it out (such as Microsoft’s failed takeover
bid, 2008). It was incorporated in 1995 and
was soon absorbing other enterprises that
would contribute to Yahoo’s growth: in 1997
Rocketmail became Yahoo!Mail, ClassicGames
became Yahoo!Games. A marketing alliance
with google followed. In 2005 Yahoo! acquired
the photo-sharing service, Flickr. Then came
Yahoo!Maps (setting the competition nerves
jangling with google) and social media sites
(My Web, Yahoo!Personal, Delicious and
Yahoo!Buzz).
As with other online providers, Yahoo! has
incurred widespread criticism and not incon-
siderable litigation. The organization’s global
ambitions, in particular its business in China,
have been the target of accusations that collu-
sion took place with the Chinese government,
namely concerning Yahoo!’s identification of
Chinese dissidents using the Yahoo! platform to
communicate their opinions.
Following the jailing of journalist and dissident
Shi Tao for ten years in 2005, the British and
Irish National Union of Journalists (NUJ) called
for a boycott of Yahoo!’s products and services as
a result of the organization’s activities in China.
A ten-year sentence awaited another ‘outed’
dissident, Wang Xiaoning. In 2007 Wang’s wife
Yu Ling, supported by the World Organization
for Human Rights USA, sued Yahoo! in a San
Francisco court.
Speaking for the human rights organization,
Morton Sklar stated that ‘Yahoo! had reason to
know that they provided China with the identifi -
cation information that these individuals would
be arrested’. Th e issue proceeded as far as the US
House Foreign Aff airs Committee, Yahoo! being
criticized for failing to provide full information,
this being described as ‘at best inexcusable negli-
gence’ and at worst ‘deceptive’.believed, ‘an important step towards fully
competitive markets’. Th is radical move towards
deregulation was widely challenged by critics
who argued that more freedom actually meant
more American dominance; and that fully
competitive markets were likely to reward the
strong and punish the weak.
Edward Herman and Robert McChesney
write, in Th e Global Media: Th e New Missionar-
ies of Corporate Capitalism (Continuum, 1997),
‘It may be worth noting that the United States
is home of ten of the sixteen largest telecom-
munications fi rms in the world, and these are
the fi rms that are the major benefi ciaries of free
trade.’ Th e authors believe that while this and
other liberalizing measures in global markets
have ‘improved services for business and the
affl uent in the developing world, the principle
of universal access has been compromised, if
not abandoned’. Also, such measures have ‘led
to numerous episodes of large-scale graft and
corruption’.
Th e liberalization (meaning privatization)
of telecommunications has encouraged merg-
ers, partnerships and joint ventures among the
decreasing number of giant players, leading
to what the UK Financial Times (2 April 1996)
termed ‘a handful of giants, straddling the world
market’. See global media system: the main
players; network neutrality. See also
topic guides under global perspectives;
media issues & debates.X
X-certifi cate See certification of films.
Xerography Reprographic process using a
photo-electric surface that converts light into
an electronic charge. Documents can be repro-
duced in black and white and in colour to a very
high standard, and reduced in size or enlarged.
Th e electrostatic image of a document attracts
charged ink powder, which in turn is attracted
to charged paper. A visible image is formed and
fi xed permanently by heating.
Xenophobia Fear of foreigners; from the Greek,
xeno – strange, foreign, guest, and phobos, fear.
The media’s role in cultivating xenophobic
tendencies in the public has a long, and often
tragic, history. Th e speed at which such tenden-
cies can be provoked and manipulated is a vital
area of media research. See demonization;
effects of the mass media; folk devils;
moral panics and the media; radio death;
stereotype; wedom, theydom.