Yahoo facts for kids
.svg)
Logo used since 2019
|
|
| Type of business | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
|
Type of site
|
Web portal and online services |
| Founded | January 1994 |
| Headquarters |
,
United States
|
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Owners |
|
| Founder(s) | |
| Products | List of products |
| Revenue | $7.4 billion (2020) |
| Employees | 8,600 (2017) |
| Parent |
|
| Advertising | Yahoo Ad Tech |
| Registration | Optional |
| Current status | Active |
Yahoo is a well-known American company that offers many online services. It's like a big online hub or "web portal." You can use Yahoo for things like searching the internet with Yahoo Search. It also provides services such as My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail for emails, Yahoo News for current events, and Yahoo Finance for money news.
Yahoo was started by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994. It was one of the first big companies on the internet in the 1990s. Over time, some of its services changed or stopped. Other companies like Facebook and Google became more popular. Today, Yahoo is mostly owned by Apollo Global Management and partly by Verizon.
Contents
What Does "Yahoo" Mean?
The name "Yahoo" has a few interesting meanings. One idea is that it's a "backronym." This means the letters stand for something else, like "Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle." "Hierarchical" means things were organized in layers, like folders inside folders. "Oracle" meant a source of good information.
However, the founders, David Filo and Jerry Yang, said they picked the name because they liked a slang meaning. In college, some students used "yahoo" to describe someone who was a bit rough or unsophisticated. This idea came from the "Yahoo" creatures in the book Gulliver's Travels.
Yahoo's Journey: A Look Back
How Yahoo Started
In January 1994, Jerry Yang and David Filo were students at Stanford University. They created a website called "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web." This site was a list of websites, organized by hand into categories. It wasn't a search engine at first.
In March 1994, they changed the name to "Yahoo!" The website address "yahoo.com" was registered in January 1995. Yahoo became an official company in March 1995. Later that year, they added a search function called Yahoo Search. This helped people find things within their organized list. Yahoo quickly became very popular for finding information online.
Growing Big
.jpg)
Yahoo grew very fast in the 1990s. In April 1996, Yahoo became a public company. This meant people could buy shares of its stock. Its stock price went up a lot. Yahoo also started offering many other services, becoming a "web portal." This put it in competition with other early internet companies.
By 1998, Yahoo was a top starting point for internet users. Its human-edited directory was very popular. Yahoo also bought other companies. In 1997, it bought RocketMail and turned it into Yahoo Mail, offering free email. In 1999, Yahoo made two big purchases: Geocities and Broadcast.com.
Yahoo's stock price reached its highest point in January 2000. This was during a time called the "dot-com bubble." But after the bubble burst, the stock price dropped significantly.
In June 2000, Yahoo started using Google for its search results. Over the next four years, Yahoo developed its own search technology. In 2007, Yahoo began offering unlimited email storage for Yahoo Mail. This was a response to Google's Gmail. In 2008, Yahoo faced tough competition and had to let go of many employees.
Changes and Challenges
In 2008, Microsoft tried to buy Yahoo for a lot of money. Yahoo said no, believing the offer was too low. Microsoft increased its offer, but Yahoo still wanted more, so Microsoft stopped trying to buy it.
Over the years, Yahoo had several different leaders. Carol Bartz became CEO in 2009. She was later replaced by Scott Thompson in 2012. Thompson made some big changes and laid off about 14% of the company's workers. He was later replaced by Marissa Mayer in July 2012.
Under Marissa Mayer, Yahoo bought the blogging site Tumblr for $1.1 billion in 2013. Yahoo also bought other companies like Rockmelt and BrightRoll. In July 2013, more people in the U.S. visited Yahoo websites than Google. This was the first time Yahoo had more visitors since 2011.
More recently, in August 2023, Yahoo bought Commonstock, a social investing platform. In April 2024, Yahoo acquired Artifact, an app that uses AI to gather news.
Decline and Sale
By 2015, Yahoo's performance was declining. In February 2016, Yahoo announced more layoffs, cutting 15% of its staff.
In July 2016, Verizon Communications announced it would buy Yahoo's main internet business. This deal did not include Yahoo's shares in Alibaba Group or Yahoo Japan. In February 2017, Verizon lowered the purchase price due to some past security issues at Yahoo.
On June 13, 2017, Verizon completed the purchase of Yahoo. Marissa Mayer resigned as CEO. Yahoo, AOL, and HuffPost then became part of a new company called Oath Inc., which was later renamed Verizon Media.
The parts of the original Yahoo! Inc. that Verizon did not buy were renamed Altaba. This company later closed down. In September 2021, investment funds managed by Apollo Global Management bought 90% of Yahoo.
In November 2021, Yahoo stopped its operations in mainland China. This was because of the difficult business and legal rules there. In 2023, Yahoo announced it would cut 20% of its workforce. This was part of a trend of layoffs in many big tech companies.
Yahoo's Products and Services
Yahoo offers many different online products and services. These include:
- Yahoo Mail: For sending and receiving emails.
- Yahoo News: For reading news articles.
- Yahoo Finance: For information about money and stocks.
- Yahoo Sports: For sports news and scores.
- Yahoo Search: The search engine to find information on the internet.
- My Yahoo: A personalized page where you can see your favorite news and services.
For a full list of all services Yahoo has offered, you can visit List of Yahoo-owned sites and services.
Important Data Security Events
Yahoo has experienced some major data security issues in the past.
- On September 22, 2016, Yahoo announced a data breach from late 2014. Information from at least 500 million user accounts was stolen. This was one of the biggest breaches reported at the time.
- On December 14, 2016, the company revealed another separate breach from 2014. Hackers got sensitive account details, including security questions, from at least one billion accounts.
- On October 3, 2017, Yahoo stated that all 3 billion of its user accounts were affected by a theft that happened in August 2013.
Partnerships and Sponsorships
-106289_(19257385102).jpg)
Yahoo has partnered with many organizations and events over the years.
- In 2001, Yahoo partnered with FIFA for the 2002 FIFA World Cup and 2006 FIFA World Cup soccer tournaments.
- Yahoo sponsored the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, a famous film event.
- NBC Sports Group and Yahoo Sports teamed up in 2012 to offer sports content.
- In 2013, Yahoo announced video partnerships with companies like Condé Nast and ABC NEWS.
- Yahoo became a founding partner of Levi's Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers football team, in 2014.
- The National Basketball Association (NBA) partnered with Yahoo Sports in 2018. They worked together to stream games and offer special fan experiences.
- In November 2019, Yahoo Sportsbook launched, working with BetMGM.
- BuzzFeed acquired HuffPost from Yahoo in November 2020.
- The NFL partnered with Yahoo in 2020 for a "Watch Together" feature on the Yahoo Sports app. This allowed people to watch games together online.
- Yahoo became the main sponsor for the Pramac Racing team in 2021.
- In September 2021, Yahoo was an official partner for New York Fashion Week. It also partnered with Shopify to connect online stores with Yahoo's platforms.
See also
In Spanish: Yahoo! para niños
- List of Yahoo-owned sites and services
- List of search engines
