The Open Directory Project 2 OF 3

The Open Directory Project or ODP wad founded in 1998 by Rich Skrenta and Bob True, both men were working at Sun Microsystems when they founded the OPD. The Open Directory Project has undergone several name changes because of complaints from other companies. It was first named as Gnuhoo, but was replaced because it linked to the GNU project which it did not have much in common with.

To accommodate this complain, the name was changed to NewHoo – again, it was opposed by Yahoo!, because it sounded too much like the said search engine. They switched the name again to ZURL, but before they could do that NewHoo was acquired by the Netscape Communications Corporation. On October 1998 GnuHoo/ NewHoo/ ZURL was finally renamed as The Open Directory Project and has since been very successful. Netscape was later on acquired by AOL a short while after they got the ODP and AOL was later on acquired by Time-Warner.

MORE TO COME!