was a Japanese

web services A web service (WS) is either: * a service offered by an electronic device to another electronic device, communicating with each other via the Internet, or * a server running on a computer device, listening for requests at a particular port over a n ...

provider. It was founded in 1996 as a joint venture between

SoftBank is a Japanese multinational Investment company, investment holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, that focuses on investment management. The group primarily invests in companies operating in technology that offer goods and services ...

and

Yahoo! Inc Yahoo Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!l ...

. In 2019, it changed to a holding company structure and came under

Z Holdings was a Japanese internet holding company owned by A Holdings, a joint venture between SoftBank Group and Naver Corporation. It was founded in 2019 as a result of Yahoo! Japan Corporation's change to a holding company structure. In 2020, it merg ...

, a subsidiary of SoftBank Group. In 2021,

Line Corporation was a Japanese internet company. It was a subsidiary of Z Holdings, a joint venture between SoftBank Group and Naver Corporation. It was established in 2000 as the Japanese subsidiary of South Korean NHN Corporation's online game community si ...

also became part of ZHD, and in 2023, Yahoo! Japan merged with ZHD and its five subsidiaries, including Line Corp, to form

LY Corporation , trading as LYC, is a Japanese internet company owned by A Holdings, a joint venture between SoftBank Group of Japan, and Naver Corporation of South Korea, founded in 2023 by the merger of Z Holdings, and four subsidiaries including Line Co ...

. It operated

Yahoo! Japan is a Japanese web portal. It was the most-visited website in Japan, nearing monopolistic status. According to ''The Japan Times'', as of 2012, Yahoo! Japan had a footprint on the internet market in Japan. In terms of use as a search engine, ...

, which was the most-visited website in Japan, nearing monopolistic status.

History

Yahoo! and SoftBank formed

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 displayin ...

in Japan. Yahoo! Japan went live on April 1, 1996. Yahoo! Japan was listed on

JASDAQ , formerly the is one of the sections of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. It was formerly an independent stock exchange. JASDAQ is not related to NASDAQ in the United States, but has operated an electronic trading system similar to NASDAQ. History In ...

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. The exchange is owned by Japan Exchange Group (JPX), a holding company that it also lists (), and operated by Tokyo Stock Exchange, Inc., a wholly owned sub ...

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 is a price-weighted index, operating in the Japanese yen, Japanese Yen (JP¥), and its compone ...

stock market index In finance, a stock index, or stock market index, is an Index (economics), index that measures the performance of a stock market, or of a subset of a stock market. It helps investors compare current stock price levels with past prices to calcul ...

in 2005. In 2017,

Verizon Communications Verizon Communications Inc. ( ), is an American telecommunications company headquartered in New York City. It is the world's second-largest telecommunications company by revenue and its mobile network is the largest wireless carrier in the ...

purchased the core internet business of United States-based

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

, and merged it with

AOL 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, and a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc. The service traces its history to an online ...

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 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 had acquired old Yahoo's Internet business. Verizon complet ...

. 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 A license (American English) or licence (Commonwealth English) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another part ...

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, Yahoo! Japan Corporation was renamed Z Holdings and merged with LINE Corporation. Under the new structure,

Naver Corporation 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. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet services and artificial intelligence. It holds a dominant position in China's search engine market (via Baidu Search), and provides a wide variety of o ...

Alibaba Ali Baba is a character from the folk tale "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves". Alibaba Group is a Chinese multinational internet technology company. Ali Baba or Alibaba may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Films * ''Ali Baba and the Forty T ...

, and

Tencent Tencent Holdings Ltd. ( zh, s=腾讯, p=Téngxùn) is a Chinese Multinational corporation, multinational technology Conglomerate (company), conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimed ...

, 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 the online retail marketplace Rakuten Ichiba, its businesses include financial services utilizing Fintech, digital content and communi ...

. The merger also gives Z Holdings three additional Asian markets where Line is popular: Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia.

Industry affiliations

Yahoo! Japan was a founding member of the Japan Association of New Economy (JANE, at the time named ''Japan e-business association''), a Japanese e-business association led by

CEO

Hiroshi Mikitani (born March 11, 1965) is a Japanese billionaire business magnate 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 Orchest ...

, in February 2010; Rakuten later withdrew from the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) in June 2011 and made moves to make JANE become a rival to Keidanren. Yahoo! Japan withdrew from JANE in March 2012 and joined Keidanren in July 2012.The Daily Yomiur
Keidanren welcomes new member Yahoo, August 1 2012
Retrieved on August 1, 2012

References

External links

Company info
{{Nikkei 225 Technology companies established in 1996 Mass media companies established in 1996 Japanese companies established in 1996 Technology companies disestablished in 2023 Mass media companies disestablished in 2023 Japanese companies disestablished in 2023 1997 initial public offerings 2021 mergers and acquisitions Companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Companies in the Nikkei 225 Internet technology companies of Japan Former joint ventures

History

Industry affiliations

See also

References

External links