Internet pioneer Yahoo will soon be absorbed by Verizon Communications and known as Altaba, but for many people, the brand remains synonymous with the unique shade of purple in its logo.
While many companies invest plenty of money and time in choosing the right look and feel for their branding, a fireside chat from earlier this year revealed Yahoo’s colour selection was largely by accident.
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Speaking with founders Jerry Yang and David Filo at Yahoo’s annual tech conference Tech Pulse, outgoing chief executive Marissa Mayer asked the founders how the Yahoo purple came to be.
“We were purple before it was cool to be purple, now everybody’s purple,” Yang told listeners at the conference.
“I remember we were trying to paint the office, and we sent Filo out for paint and we told him, grey paint.”
“He came back with something that looked grey on the wall when we painted it, but when it dried it became purple.”
Watch the full clip from Tech Pulse is below.
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