Yahoo was founded in January 1994 by Stanford graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo as "Jerry and David's guide to the World Wide Web," later renamed Yahoo!—a name chosen for its backronym "Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle" and the slang term meaning "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth" from Gulliver's Travels. It became a pioneer of the early internet, going public in April 1996, and by 1998 was the most popular starting point for web users, with its stock peaking at $118.75 in January 2000 before crashing during the dot-com bust. The company made major acquisitions like RocketMail (which became Yahoo Mail) in 1997 and Geocities and Broadcast.com in 1999, but it also missed two crucial chances to buy Google—declining a $1 million offer in 1998 and failing to close a $3 billion deal in 2002. In the 2010s, Yahoo lost significant market share to Facebook and Google, leading to a decline in usage and the discontinuation of some services. Today, Yahoo is operated by Yahoo! Inc., which is 90% owned by Apollo Global Management and 10% by Verizon, and it continues to provide a web portal with services like Yahoo Search, Mail, News, Finance, and Sports.