Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its

logo A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wordm ...

) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in

Sunnyvale, California Sunnyvale () is a city located in the Santa Clara Valley in northwest Santa Clara County in the U.S. state of California. Sunnyvale lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101 and is bordered by portions of San Jose to the no ...

and operated by the namesake company

Yahoo Inc. Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manag ...

, which is 90% owned by

investment fund An investment fund is a way of investing money alongside other investors in order to benefit from the inherent advantages of working as part of a group such as reducing the risks of the investment by a significant percentage. These advantages in ...

s managed by Apollo Global Management and 10% by

Verizon Communications Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in ...

. It provides a

web portal A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displa ...

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

Yahoo Search, and related services, including My Yahoo!,

Yahoo Mail Yahoo! Mail is an email service launched on October 8, 1997, by the American company Yahoo, Inc. The service is free for personal use, with an optional monthly fee for additional features. Business email was previously available with the Yahoo! ...

Yahoo News Yahoo! News is a news website that originated as an internet-based news aggregator by Yahoo!. The site was created by a Yahoo! software engineer named Brad Clawsie in August 1996. Articles originally came from news services such as the Associate ...

Yahoo Finance Yahoo! Finance is a media property that is part of the Yahoo! network. It provides financial news, data and commentary including stock quotes, press releases, financial reports, and original content. It also offers some online tools for pe ...

Yahoo Sports Yahoo! Sports is a sports news website launched by Yahoo! on December 8, 1997. It receives a majority of its information from STATS, Inc. It employs numerous writers, and has team pages for teams in almost every North American major sport. Be ...

and its advertising platform, Yahoo! Native. Yahoo was established by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994 and was one of the pioneers of the early Internet era in the 1990s. However, usage declined in the late 2000s as some services discontinued and it lost market share to

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

and

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

History

Founding

In January 1994, Yang and Filo were electrical engineering graduate students at Stanford University, when they created a website named "Jerry and David's guide to the World Wide Web". The site was a human-edited

web directory A web directory or link directory is an online list or catalog of websites. That is, it is a directory on the World Wide Web of (all or part of) the World Wide Web. Historically, directories typically listed entries on people or businesses, and th ...

, organized in a hierarchy, as opposed to a searchable index of pages. In March 1994, "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" was renamed "Yahoo!" and became known as the

Yahoo Directory The Yahoo! Directory was a web directory which at one time rivaled DMOZ in size. The directory was Yahoo!'s first offering and started in 1994 under the name Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web. When Yahoo! changed its main results to c ...

.The Yahoo Directory — Once The Internet's Most Important Search Engine — Is To Close
September 26, 2014, retrieved on June 3, 2017 The "yahoo.com" domain was registered on January 18, 1995. The word "yahoo" is a

backronym A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The ...

for "

Yet Another Among programmers, yet another (often abbreviated ya, Ya, or YA in the initial part of an acronym) is an idiomatic qualifier in the name of a computer program, organisation, or event that is confessedly unoriginal. Stephen C. Johnson is credited ...

Hierarchically Organized Oracle" or "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle". The term "hierarchical" described how the Yahoo database was arranged in layers of subcategories. The term "oracle" was intended to mean "source of truth and wisdom", and the term "officious", rather than being related to the word's normal meaning, described the many office workers who would use the Yahoo database while surfing from work. However, Filo and Yang insist they mainly selected the name because they liked the slang definition of a "yahoo" (used by college students in David Filo's native Louisiana in the late 1980s and early 1990s to refer to an unsophisticated, rural Southerner): "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." This meaning derives from the

Yahoo Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present), Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds ma ...

race of fictional beings from ''

Gulliver's Travels ''Gulliver's Travels'', or ''Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships'' is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan ...

''. Yahoo was incorporated on March 2, 1995. In 1995, a

function, called Yahoo Search, was introduced. This allowed users to search Yahoo Directory. Yahoo soon became the first popular online directory and search engine on the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

Expansion

Yahoo grew rapidly throughout the 1990s. Yahoo became a

public company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange ( l ...

via an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...

in April 1996 and its stock price rose 600% within two years. Like many search engines and web directories, Yahoo added a web portal, putting it in competition with services including Excite,

Lycos Lycos, Inc., is a web search engine and web portal established in 1994, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, web hosting, social networking, and entertainment websites. The company is based in Waltha ...

, and

America Online AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo (2017� ...

. By 1998, Yahoo was the most popular starting point for web users, and the human-edited Yahoo Directory the most popular search engine, receiving 95 million page views per day, triple that of rival Excite. It also made many high-profile acquisitions. Yahoo began offering free

e-mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...

from October 1997 after the acquisition of RocketMail, which was then renamed to

. In 1998, Yahoo replaced

AltaVista AltaVista was a Web search engine established in 1995. It became one of the most-used early search engines, but lost ground to Google and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, which retained the brand, but based all AltaVista searches on its own sear ...

as the crawler-based search engine underlying the Directory with Inktomi. Yahoo's two biggest acquisitions were made in 1999:

Geocities Yahoo! GeoCities was a web hosting service that allowed users to create and publish websites for free and to browse user-created websites by their theme or interest. GeoCities was started in November 1994 by David Bohnett and John Rezner, and ...

for $3.6 billion and Broadcast.com for $5.7 billion. Its stock price skyrocketed during the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Comp ...

, closing at an all-time high of $118.75/share on January 3, 2000. However, after the dot-com bubble burst, it reached a post-bubble low of $8.11 on September 26, 2001. Yahoo began using

for search in June 2000. Over the next four years, it developed its own search technologies, which it began using in 2004 partly using technology from its $280 million acquisition of Inktomi in 2002. In response to Google's

Gmail Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active user (computing), users worldwide. A user typically accesses Gmail in a web browser or the official mobile app. Google also supports the use of email clien ...

, Yahoo began to offer unlimited email storage in 2007. In 2008, the company laid off hundreds of people as it struggled from competition. In February 2008,

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

made an unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo for $44.6 billion. Yahoo rejected the bid, claiming that it "substantially undervalues" the company and was not in the interest of its shareholders. Although Microsoft increased its bid to $47 billion, Yahoo insisted on another 10%+ increase to the offer and Microsoft cancelled the offer in May 2008.

Carol Bartz Carol Ann Bartz (born August 28, 1948) is an American business executive, former president and CEO of the internet services company Yahoo!, and former chairman, president, and CEO at architectural and engineering design software company Autodesk. ...

, who had no previous experience in Internet advertising, replaced Yang as CEO in January 2009. In September 2011, after failing to meet targets, she was fired by chairman

Roy J. Bostock Roy J. Bostock is an American investor, businessman who served as chairman of Yahoo! Inc. from January 2008 to May 2012. He currently serves on the board of directors of Delta Air Lines. From 2000 to 2001 he served as chairman of the advertisin ...

; CFO Tim Morse was named as Interim CEO of the company. In April 2012, after the appointment of Scott Thompson as CEO, several key executives resigned, including

chief product officer A chief product officer (CPO), sometimes known as head of product, is a corporate title referring to an executive responsible for various product-related activities in an organization. The CPO is to the business's product what the CTO is to tech ...

Blake Irving. On April 4, 2012, Yahoo announced 2,000 layoffs, or about 14% of its 14,100 workers by the end of year, expected to save around $375 million annually. In an email sent to employees in April 2012, Thompson reiterated his view that customers should come first at Yahoo. He also completely reorganized the company. On May 13, 2012, Thompson was fired and was replaced on an interim basis by Ross Levinsohn, recently appointed head of Yahoo's new Media group. Several associates of Third Point Management, including Daniel S. Loeb were nominated to the board of directors. Thompson's total compensation for his 130-day tenure with Yahoo was at least $7.3 million. On July 15, 2012,

Marissa Mayer Marissa Ann Mayer (; born May 30, 1975) is an American businesswoman and investor. She is an information technology executive, and co-founder of Sunshine Contacts. Mayer formerly served as the president and chief executive officer of Yahoo!, a ...

was appointed president and CEO of Yahoo, effective July 17, 2012. In June 2013, Yahoo acquired

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

ging site

Tumblr Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a ...

for $1.1 billion in cash, with Tumblr's CEO and founder David Karp continuing to run the site. In July 2013, Yahoo announced plans to open an office in San Francisco. On August 2, 2013, Yahoo acquired Rockmelt; its staff was retained, but all of its existing products were terminated. Data collated by comScore during July 2013 revealed that, during the month, more people in the U.S. visited Yahoo websites than Google; the first time that Yahoo outperformed Google since 2011. The data did not count mobile usage, nor Tumblr. Mayer also hired

Katie Couric Katherine Anne Couric ( ; born January 7, 1957) is an American journalist and presenter. She is founder of Katie Couric Media, a multimedia news and production company. She also publishes a daily newsletter, ''Wake Up Call''. From 2013 to 2017, ...

to be the anchor of a new online news operation and started an online food magazine. However, by January 2014, doubts about Mayer's progress emerged when Mayer fired her own first major hire, Henrique de Castro. On December 12, 2014, Yahoo acquired

video advertising Video advertising encompasses online display advertisements that have video within them, but it is generally accepted that it refers to advertising that occurs before, during and/or after a video stream on the internet. The advertising units us ...

provider

BrightRoll BrightRoll was a programmatic video advertising platform that was acquired by Yahoo!. BrightRoll's video platform became Yahoo's primary video advertising marketplace and demand-side platform. The BrightRoll brand was discontinued by Verizon Me ...

for $583 million. On November 21, 2014, Yahoo acquired Cooliris.

Decline, security breaches, and sale

By December 2015, Mayer was criticized as performance declined. Mayer was ranked as the least likable CEO in tech. On February 2, 2016, Mayer announced layoffs amounting to 15% of the Yahoo! workforce. On July 25, 2016,

announced the acquisition of Yahoo's core Internet business for $4.83 billion. The deal excluded Yahoo's 15% stake in Alibaba Group and 35.5% stake in

Yahoo Japan is a Japanese internet company originally formed as a joint venture between the American internet company Yahoo! (later divested by Verizon into Altaba) and the Japanese company SoftBank. It is headquartered at Kioi Tower in the Tokyo Garden Terr ...

. On February 21, 2017, as a result of the Yahoo data breaches, Verizon lowered its purchase price for Yahoo by $350 million and reached an agreement to share liabilities regarding the data breaches. On June 13, 2017, Verizon completed the acquisition of Yahoo and

resigned. Yahoo, AOL, and

HuffPost ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...

were to continue operating under their own names, under the umbrella of a new company, Oath Inc., later called Verizon Media. The parts of the original Yahoo! Inc. which were not purchased by

were renamed Altaba, which later liquidated, making a final distribution in October 2020. In September 2021,

s managed by Apollo Global Management acquired 90% of Yahoo. In November 2021, Yahoo announced that it was ceasing its operations in mainland China due to an increasingly challenging business and legal environment. Previously, the company has discontinued China Yahoo! Mail on August 20, 2013.

Chief Executive Officers

Eleven chief executives and interim leaders have led the Yahoo companies since 1995. They are: * Jim Lanzone, CEO of

(2021–present) * Guru Gowrappan, CEO of Oath Inc., Verizon Media, and Yahoo (2018–2021) *

Tim Armstrong Timothy Ross Armstrong (born November 25, 1965) is an American musician, singer, songwriter and producer. Known for his distinctive voice, he is the singer/guitarist for the punk rock band Rancid and hip hop/punk rock supergroup Transplants. ...

, CEO of Oath Inc. (2017–2018) *

(2012–2017) * Ross Levinsohn Interim (2012) * Scott Thompson (2012) * Tim Morse Interim (2011–2012) *

(2009–2011) * Jerry Yang (2007–2009) *

Terry Semel Terence Steven Semel (born February 24, 1943) is an American corporate executive who was the chairman and CEO of Yahoo! Incorporated from 2001 to 2007. He resigned as CEO due in part to pressure from shareholders' dissatisfaction over his comp ...

(2001–2007) *

Timothy Koogle Timothy Andrew Koogle (born July 5, 1951) is an American executive who served as the first CEO and President of web company Yahoo! between 1995 and 2001. He served as the company's chairman from 1999 to 2003. He was named to the Top 25 Executives ...

(1995–2001)

Products and services

For a list of all current and defunct services offered by Yahoo, see: List of Yahoo-owned sites and services.

Data breaches

On September 22, 2016, Yahoo disclosed a

data breach A data breach is a security violation, in which sensitive, protected or confidential data is copied, transmitted, viewed, stolen or used by an individual unauthorized to do so. Other terms are unintentional information disclosure, data leak, info ...

that occurred in late 2014, in which information associated with at least 500 million user accounts, one of the largest breaches reported to date. The United States indicted four men, including two employees of Russia's

Federal Security Service The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) RF; rus, Федеральная служба безопасности Российской Федерации (ФСБ России), Federal'naya sluzhba bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Feder ...

(FSB), for their involvement in the hack. On December 14, 2016, the company revealed that another separate data breach had occurred in 2014, with hackers obtaining sensitive account information, including security questions, to at least one billion accounts. The company stated that hackers had utilized stolen internal software to forge

HTTP cookie HTTP cookies (also called web cookies, Internet cookies, browser cookies, or simply cookies) are small blocks of data created by a web server while a user is browsing a website and placed on the user's computer or other device by the user's ...

s. On October 3, 2017, the company stated that all 3 billion of its user accounts were affected by the August 2013 theft.

Criticism

DMCA notice to whistleblower

On November 30, 2009, Yahoo was criticized by the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ...

for sending a

DMCA The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or ...

notice to

whistleblower A whistleblower (also written as whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a person, often an employee, who reveals information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe or fraudulent. Whi ...

website " Cryptome" for publicly posting details, prices, and procedures on obtaining private information pertaining to Yahoo's subscribers.

Censorship of private emails affiliated with Occupy Wall Street protests

After some concerns over censorship of private emails regarding a website affiliated with

Occupy Wall Street Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a protest movement against economic inequality and the influence of money in politics that began in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Wall Street financial district, in September 2011. It gave rise to the ...

protests were raised, Yahoo responded with an apology and explained it as an accident.

Partners and sponsorships

On September 11, 2001, Yahoo! announced its partnership with FIFA for the

2002 FIFA World Cup The 2002 FIFA World Cup, also branded as Korea Japan 2002, was the 17th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial football world championship for men's national teams organized by FIFA. It was held from 31 May to 30 June 2002 at sites in South Korea ...

and

2006 FIFA World Cup The 2006 FIFA World Cup, also branded as Germany 2006, was the 18th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial international football world championship tournament. It was held from 9 June to 9 July 2006 in Germany, which had won the right to host th ...

tournaments. It was one of FIFA's 15 partners at the tournaments. The deal included co-branding the organization's websites. Yahoo! sponsored the

2012 Sundance Film Festival The 2012 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 19 until January 29, 2012 in Park City, Utah. 64 short films were selected for the festival from 7,675 submissions, including 27 international shorts from 3,592 submissions. Non-competition ...

NBC Sports Group NBC Sports Group is a division of NBCUniversal that is responsible for NBC Sports' media properties, encompassing the NBC television network's sports division as well as day-to-day operation of the company's sports-oriented cable networks and oth ...

aligned with Yahoo Sports the same year with content and program offerings on mobile and desktop platforms. Yahoo announced television video partnerships in 2013 with

Condé Nast Condé Nast () is a global mass media company founded in 1909 by Condé Montrose Nast, and owned by Advance Publications. Its headquarters are located at One World Trade Center in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. The company's med ...

, WWE,

ABC NEWS ABC News is the journalism, news division of the American broadcast network American Broadcasting Company, ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast ''ABC World News Tonight, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other progra ...

, and

CNBC CNBC (formerly Consumer News and Business Channel) is an American basic cable business news channel. It provides business news programming on weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Eastern Time, while broadcasting talk sh ...

. Yahoo entered into a 10-year collaboration in 2014, as a founding partner of

Levi's Stadium Levi's Stadium is an American football stadium located in Santa Clara, California, just outside San Jose in the San Francisco Bay Area. It has served as the home venue for the National Football League (NFL)'s San Francisco 49ers since 2014. T ...

, home of the

San Francisco 49ers The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National ...

. The

National Basketball Association The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball sports league, league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues i ...

partnered with Yahoo Sports to stream games, offer virtual and augmented-reality fan experiences, and in 2018 NBA League Pass. Yahoo Sportsbook launched in November 2019, a collaboration with BetMGM.

BuzzFeed BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson III to focus on tracking viral content. ...

acquired

from Yahoo in November 2020, in a stock deal with Yahoo as a minority shareholder. The NFL partnered with Yahoo in 2020, to introduce a new "Watch Together" function on the Yahoo Sports app for interactive co-viewing through a synchronized livestream of local and primetime NFL games. The

Paley Center for Media The Paley Center for Media, formerly the Museum of Television & Radio (MT&R) and the Museum of Broadcasting, founded in 1975 by William S. Paley, is an American cultural institution in New York with a branch office in Los Angeles, dedicated to ...

collaborated with Verizon Media to exclusively stream programs on Yahoo platforms beginning in 2020. Yahoo became the main sponsor for the Pramac Racing team and the first title sponsor for the 2021 ESport/MotoGP Championship season. Yahoo, the official partner for the September 2021

New York Fashion Week New York Fashion Week (NYFW), held in February and September of each year, is a semi-annual series of events in Manhattan typically spanning 7–9 days when international fashion collections are shown to buyers, the press, and the general publ ...

event also unveiled sponsorship for the

Rebecca Minkoff Rebecca Minkoff is a global fashion brand that was founded by brother and sister duo Rebecca Minkoff and Uri Minkoff in 2005 in New York City. The brand has retail stores in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Korea, ...

collection via a

NFT A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided, that is recorded in a blockchain, and that is used to certify authenticity and ownership. The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the b ...

space. In September 2021, it was announced that Yahoo partnered with

Shopify Shopify Inc. is a Canadian multinational e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. Shopify is the name of its proprietary e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. The Shopify platform offers online ret ...

, connecting the e-commerce merchants on Yahoo Finance, AOL and elsewhere.

References

External links

*
Yahoo! Products and Services

ALTABA and Yahoo! EDGAR Filing History
{{Authority control 1994 establishments in California 2017 mergers and acquisitions Companies based in Sunnyvale, California Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq Companies in the PRISM network Internet properties established in 1994 Multinational companies headquartered in the United States Software companies based in California Software companies of the United States Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Technology companies established in 1994 Telecommunications companies established in 1994