In a new profile with the New York Times about the early days of Yahoo, one interesting note rose to the surface as those involved with the launch of Yahoo News citing the passing of Jerry Garcia as a catalyst to kickstart the platform. 

“That was the birth of Yahoo news,” Srinija Srinivasan told the NYT when discussing the topic of “human judgement” as it related to searches on the internet. The “birth” Srinivasan is speaking of comes shortly following Garcia’s death in August of 1995 when searches on him spiked immediately. In response to the spike, those at Yahoo put a Garcia link on the home page, thus birthing one of the most successful news portals on the internet. 

This isn’t the first time Jerry Garcia’s death (and August 9, 1995) has been cited as one of the internet’s first major moments, as this was also the day of the Netscape IPO.