Yahoo and my life in cyberspace

My first email account was a hotmail account in 1996.
On a trip to Bangalore, I went to a cyber cafe on Brigade Road, paid Rs 120 for an hour of usage and managed to get a hotmail account registered . A year later, I signed up for a yahoo account and it seemed like a God Sent thing - it was so much sharper, user friendly and colourful compared to hotmail.  Hotmail was what it was ( and largely, still is - a boring blue email), but Yahoo was super cool. Then came yahoo messenger. Yahoo was the word to say when online .  One of my friends in India started chatting with a girl in Germany on yahoo messenger. A few years on, they ended up getting married. It was an unbelievable world that yahoo had opened up. 

Then , in my cyber life, in 1998 came a search engine. I read about it in a magazine and tried it out. It went by the name Google. It was very efficient and did the job nicely. 

Then followed the sequence of events in the Silicon valley, which had an impact on the cyber life of many many millions like me. ( I got these dates from a whatsapp message, and notwithstanding the accuracy of the dates and the numbers, the essence of the message stays)

1998: Yahoo refuses to buy Google for US $ 1 million

2002: Yahoo realizes its mistake and offers to buy Google for US $ 3 billion. Google wants US $ 5 billion. Yahoo refuses.

2008: Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo for US $ 40 billion. Yahoo says no.

2016: Yahoo sold to Verizon for US $ 4.6 billion.  

On a related note, Google's market cap today is $ 500 billion. 

It's fun to speculate, which will be the next one to fall - Google, Facebook, Apple , Amazon ? 

Like in the case of yahoo, Something which seemed impossible a few years ago, becomes a painful reality in some time . 

The sequence of events explains it all.
Timing is everything.
And being ready to embrace and drive change is what counts the most. 

Mohd Shahid - a genius and a gentleman

Two days ago, Indian sports lost one of its greatest heroes , Mohd Shahid, Olympic gold medal winner 1980 Moscow olympics. 

I was fortunate to meet Mohd Shahid in 1997. At Diesel Locomotive Works in Varanasi. I was a probationer on Indian railways and had requested him for time, for which he willingly obliged . 

 His office table had a hockey turf instead of the usual glass top. I asked him about it - he said it is a reminder of the game that he loves the most. We chatted for about an hour - spoke of the 1980 olympics, 1984 Los Angeles disappointment , of the 1982 Asiad , of Zafar Iqbal, Hasan Sardar . The stick work. The rivalry with Pakistan. Astro turf. 

 Chai followed. 

Just when it was time to leave, I made a request - can I see the Olympic gold. His eyes lit up . He got up and walked up to the almirah in his office, opened the safe , took the medal, closed his eyes for a second, and showed it to me.

 Can I touch it- I asked . 

He put it in my hands. 

So, here I was. Holding an Olympic gold medal in hand. Even now, the last Olympic gold that india has won in a team sport. 

The enormity of the occasion got to me. I hugged Shahid. I kissed the medal too. It was quite a heavy thing. Literally. And the moment was heavy too. 

Some seconds later, I handed it back to Shahid with both hands. It was one of the most electrifying moments of my life. 

when I heard of Shahid s passing away, that day came back. One of the most cherished days of my life. 

Be well, Shahid and God bless you- wherever you are. We will miss you