is a Japanese

internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

company originally formed as a

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acces ...

between the

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

internet company

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., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Mana ...

(later divested by

Verizon 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 ...

into

Altaba Altaba Inc. was a non-diversified, closed-end management investment company based in New York City that was formed from the remains of the first incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. after Verizon acquired old Yahoo's Internet business. Verizon completed i ...

) and the Japanese company SoftBank. It is headquartered at Kioi Tower in the Tokyo Garden Terrace Kioicho complex in Kioicho, Chiyoda,

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.46 ...

.Company Info
" ''Yahoo! Japan''. Retrieved on April 30, 2009. Yahoo! Japan's web portal is the most visited website in Japan, and its internet services are mostly dominant in the country. According to ''

The Japan Times ''The Japan Times'' is Japan's largest and oldest English-language daily newspaper. It is published by , a subsidiary of News2u Holdings, Inc.. It is headquartered in the in Kioicho, Chiyoda, Tokyo. History ''The Japan Times'' was launched b ...

'', as of 2012, Yahoo Japan had a footprint on the internet market in Japan. In terms of use as a search engine, however, it has never surpassed Google. The company is the second largest search engine used in Japan as of July 2021, with a market share of 19% behind Google's 77%. In March 2021, the company merged with Line Corporation, placing both companies under parent Z Holdings.

History

Yahoo! and SoftBank formed Yahoo! Japan in January 1996 to establish the first

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 displayi ...

in Japan. Yahoo! Japan went live on April 1, 1996. Yahoo! Japan was listed on JASDAQ in November 1997. In January 2000, it became the first stock in Japanese history to trade for more than ¥100 million per share. The company was listed on the

Tokyo Stock Exchange The , abbreviated as Tosho () or TSE/TYO, is a stock exchange located in Tokyo, Japan. It is the third largest stock exchange in the world by aggregate market capitalization of its listed companies, and the largest in Asia. It had 2,292 listed ...

in October 2003 and became part of the

Nikkei 225 The Nikkei 225, or , more commonly called the ''Nikkei'' or the ''Nikkei index'' (), is a stock market index for the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE). It has been calculated daily by the '' Nihon Keizai Shimbun'' (''The Nikkei'') newspaper since 19 ...

stock market index In finance, a stock index, or stock market index, is an index that measures a stock market, or a subset of the stock market, that helps investors compare current stock price levels with past prices to calculate market performance. Two of th ...

in 2005. Yahoo! Japan acquired the

naming rights Naming rights are a financial transaction and form of advertising or memorialization whereby a corporation, person, or other entity purchases the right to name a facility, object, location, program, or event, typically for a defined period of ...

for the

Fukuoka Dome The is a baseball field, located in Chūō-ku, Fukuoka, Japan. Built in 1993, the stadium was originally named and has the capacity of 38,585 seats. With a diameter of 216 meters, the Fukuoka PayPay Dome is the world's largest geodesic dome. T ...

in 2005, renaming the dome as the "Fukuoka Yahoo! Japan Dome". The "Yahoo Dome" is the home field for the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, a professional

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

team majority owned by SoftBank. Since 2010, Yahoo! Japan's search engine has been based on Google's search technology. In exchange, Google receives user activity data from Yahoo! Japan's various products. In 2017,

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 ...

purchased the core internet business of United States-based

, and merged it with

AOL 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! Inc. ...

into Oath, Inc.; Yahoo! Japan was not affected. It continued as a joint venture between Softbank and what remained of Yahoo! Inc. was renamed

. Yahoo! had been declining economically and in popularity since the late 2000s, but this was not the case for Yahoo! Japan, which continued to dominate Japan's internet industry. Following the sale, Yahoo! Japan continued to use the name "Yahoo!" under license from Verizon Communications. In July 2018, SoftBank bought $2 billion worth of shares in Yahoo! Japan from Altaba, increasing its stake to 48.17 percent. Yahoo! Japan, in turn, bought nearly the same amount of stock from SoftBank. In September 2018, Altaba sold all of its remaining shares in Yahoo! Japan for roughly $4.3 billion. Yahoo! Japan acquired trademark rights to the "Yahoo!" brand in Japan from Verizon in 2021. In March 2021 Line Corporation merged with Yahoo! Japan, which has been operated by Z Holdings, a

SoftBank Group is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs the Vi ...

subsidiary. Under the new structure, Naver Corporation (Line's former parent company) and SoftBank Corp. (the wireless carrier unit of SoftBank Group) each hold 50 percent stakes in a new company named A Holdings Corp., which holds a majority stake in Z Holdings, which will operate Line and Yahoo! Japan. Upon integrating the two businesses and creating further platforms, the merged company aims to compete with the U.S. tech giants Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple and the Chinese tech giants Baidu, Alibaba, and

Tencent Tencent Holdings Ltd. () is a Chinese multinational technology and entertainment conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimedia companies in the world based on revenue. It is also the wo ...

, as well as the Japanese e-commerce giant

Rakuten () is a Japanese technology conglomerate based in Tokyo, founded by Hiroshi Mikitani in 1997. Centered around Rakuten Ichiba, its businesses include financial services utilizing financial technology, as well as digital content and communicati ...

. The merger also gives Z Holdings three additional Asian markets where Line is popular: Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia. Yahoo Japan's services are not available in the

European Economic Area The European Economic Area (EEA) was established via the ''Agreement on the European Economic Area'', an international agreement which enables the extension of the European Union's single market to member states of the European Free Trade As ...

and the UK since 6 April 2022, due to "excessive regulatory burden".

Industry affiliations

Yahoo! Japan was a founding member of

, a Japanese e-business association led by CEO

Hiroshi Mikitani (born March 11, 1965) is a Japanese billionaire businessman and writer. He is the founder and CEO of Rakuten, Inc. He is also the president of Crimson Group, chairman of the football club Vissel Kobe, chairman of Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, an ...

, in February 2010; this occurred after Rakuten withdrew from the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) in June 2011 and made moves to become the Japan Association of New Economy as a rival to Keidanren. Yahoo! Japan withdrew from the e-business association in March 2012 and it joined Keidanren in July 2012.

Design

Yahoo! Japan continues to use a site design from prior to 2007 and the international Yahoo

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 wo ...

used before 2013, colored red.

Search engine

One of its primary businesses, originally the Yahoo! Japan search engine was a directorytype search engine, similar to Yahoo! in the United States. A crawlertype search engine was used as well, and as the popularity of the crawlertype search engine gradually increased, after October 3, 2005, Yahoo! Japan began utilizing only the crawlertype engine. On June 29, 2017, Yahoo! Japan announced that the directory-based search engine "Yahoo! Category", which had been in operation since its establishment, would be abolished on March 29, 2018. As a crawlertype search engine, Yahoo! Japan initially used technology from the Japanese company Goo, which used Google's technology. The company later switched to using Yahoo Search Technology (YST), developed by Yahoo! in the US. In addition to serving as a standard search engine, Yahoo! Japan partnered with

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

to provide real-time search for tweets. It also receives data feeds from partner companies;

Cookpad Cookpad Inc. (TYO: 2193) is a food tech company. The company operates "Cookpad" which is Japan’s largest recipe sharing service, with 60 million monthly unique users in Japan and 40 million monthly unique users globally, allowing visitors to up ...

and

Naver Naver (Hangul: 네이버) is a South Korean online platform operated by the Naver Corporation. It was launched in 1999 as the first web portal in South Korea to develop and use its own search engine. It was also the world's first operator to ...

information is displayed in search results. "Yahoo! Search Custom Search" was discontinued on March 31, 2019.

Services

Yahoo! Japan currently offers various web-based services and apps for its customers, including the following: *

Ymobile Y!mobile is a Japanese mobile phone operator. Y!mobile is a brand used by SoftBank Corp., a subsidiary of Japanese telecommunications company SoftBank Group Corporation, that provides mobile telecommunications and ADSL services. The current CEO ...

: Ymobile Corporation (ワイモバイル株式会社), stylized Y!mobile, is a subsidiary of Japanese telecommunications company SoftBank Group Corporation that provides mobile telecommunications and ADSL services. The current CEO of the company is Ken Miyauchi. It was formed in 2014 through the merger of Willcom and eAccess, and uses the Y! moniker brand from Yahoo! Japan, which is partly-owned by SoftBank. * Yahoo! Japan Mail: maintains the classic look of

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! ...

, but remains a separate service operated in Japan. Another notable change is the 10 GB storage limit, in contrast to Yahoo! Mail's 1 TB of storage and its former unlimited-storage offering. * Yahoo! Japan Auctions (ヤフオク！）: Japan's largest Internet auction service. Previously known as Yahoo! Auction and Yafuoku. * Yahoo! Japan T-Point: A rewards program that allows users to earn and redeem points for goods or cash. * Yahoo! Premium: A paid service allowing users to obtain certain benefits, including the ability to bid on certain auction listings, and various premium features with Yahoo! Wallet (which can be used in conjunction with Japan Net Bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Bank, and Rakuten Bank) and Yahoo! points. * Yahoo! Japan GyaO: A video on-demand service that has included programs such as ''

Calimero ''Calimero'' is an animated television series about a charming, but hapless anthropomorphized chicken; the only black one in a family of yellow chickens. He wears half of his egg shell still on his head. Calimero originally appeared on t ...

'', ''

Creamy Mami, the Magic Angel is a magical girl anime television series produced by Pierrot which aired from 1983 to 1984 on Nippon Television. It went on to have four OVA adaptions and featured in other Studio Pierrot special presentations. A three-volume manga was ...

'', ''

Intrigue in the Bakumatsu – Irohanihoheto is a Japanese original net animation (ONA) series, created by Ryōsuke Takahashi and Sunrise, with character designs by Yusuke Kozaki. The series follows Yojiro Akizuki, the bearer of the legendary Moon Tear Sword, who is on a mission to seal ...

'', '' Jormungand'', '' Kyorochan'', ''

Musashi Gundoh is a Japanese anime television series, based on an unused story by Monkey Punch. It premiered in Japan on the satellite station BS-i on April 9, 2006, and was also set to be broadcast across Japan by the anime satellite television network A ...

'', '' Nyanpire'', '' PRODUCE 101 JAPAN'', '' Real Drive'', ''

The World of Golden Eggs ''The World of Golden Eggs'' is an anime series made by PLUS heads inc. and Studio Crocodile. ''The World of Golden Eggs'' #1 was ranked 9th out of the top 20 anime DVDs sold in Japan in 2007, with 59,000 copies sold. ''The World of Golden Eg ...

'' Other Yahoo! Japan services include or have included Yahoo! Japan Bookstore, Yahoo! Japan News, Yahoo! Japan GeoCities (discontinued in March 2019), Yahoo! Japan Toto (a sports lottery site), Yahoo! Shopping, Yahoo! Travel, Yahoo! Roko (a mapping and review service), Yahoo! Box (a cloud storage service), Yahoo! Mobage (a social networking service), Yahoo! Wisdom Bag (similar to

Yahoo! Answers Yahoo! Answers was a community-driven question-and-answer (Q&A) website or knowledge market owned by Yahoo! where users would ask questions and answer those submitted by others, and upvote them to increase their visibility. Questions were org ...

), and Yahoo! Browser (an androidbased web browser). From April 6, 2022, the home page blocked users from the EEA and the UK, apparently due to

General Data Protection Regulation The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European Union regulation on data protection and privacy in the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA). The GDPR is an important component of EU privacy law and of human rights law, in par ...

. Some subsidiary services such as Yahoo! JAPAN Mail remained functional, although limited.

Gallery

Sky ja767a yahoo japan.jpg, A Yahoo! JAPAN-branded

Boeing 767 The Boeing 767 is an American wide-body aircraft developed and manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. The aircraft was launched as the 7X7 program on July 14, 1978, the prototype first flew on September 26, 1981, and it was certified o ...

operated by Skymark Airlines at

Osaka International Airport , often referred to as is the primary regional airport for the Kansai region of Japan, including the major cities of Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe. Classified as a first class airport, it is the airport closest to Kyoto, southwest of Kyoto Station ...

in 2000 Fukuoka Yahoo!Japan Dome.JPG, The Fukuoka Yahoo! JAPAN Dome, home of the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks baseball team Yahoo! Japan's neon sign at Roppongi.jpg, Yahoo! JAPAN

neon sign In the signage industry, neon signs are electric signs lighted by long luminous gas-discharge tubes that contain rarefied neon or other gases. They are the most common use for neon lighting, which was first demonstrated in a modern form in D ...

Roppongi is a district of Minato, Tokyo, Japan, famous for the affluent Roppongi Hills development area and popular night club scene. A few foreign embassies are located near Roppongi, and the night life is popular with locals and foreigners alike. It ...

, Tokyo Less than iPad. (6447310531).jpg, Yahoo! JAPAN website on a

Sony Tablet S The Tablet S (formerly named S1) is the first modern tablet computer released by Sony. Featuring a "unique asymmetric design", the Tablet S runs Google's Android 3.2 Honeycomb operating system and features a multitouch display, 1 GHz Nvid ...

References

External links

Yahoo! Japan

Company info
{{Authority control 1996 establishments in Japan 1997 initial public offerings 2021 mergers and acquisitions Companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Internet technology companies of Japan Internet properties established in 1996 Japanese brands Japanese entertainment websites Japanese-language websites Liberal media in Japan Mass media companies based in Tokyo Naver Corporation SoftBank Group Telecommunications companies based in Tokyo Video on demand services

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

Z Holdings