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 ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...

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 acce ...

between the American 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. (2017–present), Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds ma ...

(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 in ...

into Altaba) and the Japanese company

SoftBank 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 ...

. 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 List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

.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 Line Corporation is a Tokyo-based subsidiary of Z Holdings, which is jointly owned by Softbank Group and Naver Corporation. The company's business is mainly associated with the development of mobile applications and Internet services, particul ...

, placing both companies under parent

Z Holdings Z Holdings Corporation is a Tokyo-based holding company. Z Holdings owns Yahoo! Japan, Japan's largest portal website; Line, Japan's largest messaging app; and PayPay, Japan's largest mobile payment app. Z Holdings is controlled by another hold ...

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 displa ...

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 1950. ...

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 the ...

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 t ...

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 The are a Japanese professional baseball team based in Fukuoka, Fukuoka Prefecture. They compete in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) as a member of the Pacific League. The team was formerly known as the Nankai Hawks and was based in Osaka ...

, 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 ...

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

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 ...

subsidiary. Under the new structure,

Naver Corporation The Naver Corporation is a South Korean internet conglomerate headquartered in Seongnam that operates the search engine Naver. Naver established itself as an early pioneer in the use of user-generated content through the creation of the online ...

(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 Baidu, Inc. ( ; , meaning "hundred times") is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products and artificial intelligence (AI), headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District. It is one of th ...

Alibaba Ali Baba is a character from the folk tale ''Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves''. Ali Baba or Alibaba may also refer to: Films * ''Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves'' (1902 film), a French film directed by Ferdinand Zecca * ''Ali Baba'' (1940 film ...

, 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 communicat ...

. 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 Ass ...

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, 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 wordm ...

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 Goo or GOO may refer to: Arts and media * ''Goo'' (album), by the band Sonic Youth * Goo (''Gumby'' character), a character on ''The Gumby Show'' * Goo (''Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends''), character on ''Foster's Home for Imaginary Friend ...

, 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 i ...

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: 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, 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 th ...

'', '' Creamy Mami, the Magic Angel'', ''

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'', '' Nyanpire'', '' PRODUCE 101 JAPAN'', '' Real Drive'', '' The World of Golden Eggs'' Other Yahoo! Japan services include or have included Yahoo! Japan Bookstore, Yahoo! Japan News, Yahoo! Japan

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 ...

(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. 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 on ...

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

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 Dec ...

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

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 Z Holdings