Yahoo! facts for kids
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Logo used since 2019
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| Type of business | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
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Type of site
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Web portal and online services |
| Founded | January 1994 |
| Headquarters |
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United States
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| Area served | Worldwide |
| Owners |
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| Founder(s) | |
| Products | List of products |
| Revenue | $7.4 billion (2020) |
| Employees | 8,600 (2017) |
| Parent |
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| Advertising | Yahoo! Ad Tech |
| Registration | Optional |
| Current status | Active |
Yahoo! is an American company that provides online services. It is based in Sunnyvale, California. The company Yahoo! Inc. runs these services. Most of Yahoo! is owned by Apollo Global Management, with a smaller part owned by Verizon Communications.
Yahoo! offers a web portal, which is like a starting page for the internet. It also has a search engine called Yahoo Search. Other services include My Yahoo!, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, and Yahoo Sports. It also has a platform for online advertising.
Jerry Yang and David Filo started Yahoo! in January 1994. It was one of the first big internet companies in the 1990s. Later, in the 2000s, its popularity went down. This happened as some services closed, and other companies like Facebook and Google became more popular.
Contents
The Story of Yahoo!
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 web directory. It was like a huge list of websites, organized by hand into different topics. It was not a search engine at first.
In March 1994, they changed the name to "Yahoo!" The website address "yahoo.com" was registered on January 18, 1995.
The name "Yahoo!" is said to stand for "Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle." "Hierarchical" means the Yahoo! database was organized in layers. "Oracle" meant it was a source of truth. However, the founders also liked the slang meaning of "yahoo." This word was used by college students to describe someone who was "rude" or "uncouth." This meaning comes from the "Yahoo" creatures in the book Gulliver's Travels.
Yahoo! became a company on March 2, 1995. In the same year, a search engine called Yahoo Search was added. This allowed people to search the Yahoo! Directory. Soon, Yahoo! became one of the most popular online directories and search engines.
Growing Big
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Yahoo! grew very quickly in the 1990s. In April 1996, Yahoo! became a public company. This means its shares could be bought and sold by anyone. Its stock price went up a lot. Yahoo! also added a web portal, which put it in competition with other services like Excite and America Online.
By 1998, Yahoo! was the most popular starting point for internet users. The Yahoo! Directory was the most popular search engine. It had 95 million page views every day. Yahoo! also bought many other companies. For example, it started offering free e-mail in 1997 after buying RocketMail, which became Yahoo Mail. In 1999, Yahoo! made two very big purchases: Geocities for $3.6 billion and Broadcast.com for $5.7 billion.
Yahoo!'s stock price went very high during the dot-com bubble. This was a time when many internet companies were valued very highly. But after the bubble burst, the stock price dropped a lot.
Yahoo! started using Google for its search results in June 2000. Over the next four years, Yahoo! created its own search technology. In 2007, Yahoo! began offering unlimited email storage. This was in response to Google's Gmail. In 2008, the company had to reduce its staff because of competition.
In 2008, Microsoft tried to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 billion. Yahoo! said no, saying the offer was too low. Microsoft increased its offer, but Yahoo! still wanted more money. So, Microsoft stopped its offer in May 2008.
Several leaders have run Yahoo! over the years. In 2012, Marissa Mayer became the CEO. Under her leadership, Yahoo! bought the blogging site Tumblr for $1.1 billion in 2013. In 2013, more people in the U.S. visited Yahoo! websites than Google. This was the first time since 2011.
Changes and Sale
By 2015, Yahoo! faced more challenges. In 2016, Yahoo! announced it would reduce its workforce.
On July 25, 2016, Verizon Communications announced it would buy Yahoo!'s main internet business for $4.83 billion. This deal did not include Yahoo!'s shares in Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan.
On June 13, 2017, Verizon finished buying Yahoo! Marissa Mayer then left her role. Yahoo!, AOL, and HuffPost continued to operate under their own names. They were all part of a new company called Oath Inc., which later became 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, 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 environment there.
In 2023, Yahoo! announced it would reduce its staff by 20%. This meant about 1,000 of its 8,600 workers would leave. Other big tech companies like Google and Amazon also reduced their staff around this time.
Leaders of Yahoo!
Since 1995, eleven people have led Yahoo! as CEOs or interim leaders:
- Jim Lanzone, CEO of Yahoo Inc. (2021–present)
- Guru Gowrappan, CEO of Oath Inc., Verizon Media, and Yahoo (2018–2021)
- Tim Armstrong, CEO of Oath Inc. (2017–2018)
- Marissa Mayer (2012–2017)
- Ross Levinsohn Interim (2012)
- Scott Thompson (2012)
- Tim Morse Interim (2011–2012)
- Carol Bartz (2009–2011)
- Jerry Yang (2007–2009)
- Terry Semel (2001–2007)
- Timothy Koogle (1995–2001)
What Yahoo! Offers
For a full list of all services Yahoo! has offered, see List of Yahoo!-owned sites and services.
Security Issues
On September 22, 2016, Yahoo! announced a data breach from late 2014. In this event, 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 said another separate breach happened in 2014. In this one, hackers got sensitive account information from at least one billion accounts.
On October 3, 2017, the company stated that all 3 billion of its user accounts were affected by a theft in August 2013.
Working with Others
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On September 11, 2001, Yahoo! announced it would partner with FIFA. This was for the 2002 FIFA World Cup and 2006 FIFA World Cup soccer tournaments. Yahoo! was one of FIFA's main partners.
Yahoo! also sponsored the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. In the same year, NBC Sports Group worked with Yahoo Sports. They shared content and programs on phones and computers.
In 2013, Yahoo! announced video partnerships with companies like Condé Nast and WWE. In 2014, Yahoo! became a founding partner of Levi's Stadium. This is the home of the San Francisco 49ers football team.
The National Basketball Association (NBA) partnered with Yahoo Sports. They streamed games and offered special fan experiences. In 2019, Yahoo Sportsbook launched, working with BetMGM.
In November 2020, BuzzFeed bought HuffPost from Yahoo!. Yahoo! became a smaller owner in BuzzFeed. The NFL also partnered with Yahoo! in 2020. They added a "Watch Together" feature to the Yahoo Sports app. This allowed people to watch NFL games together online.
Yahoo! became the main sponsor for the Pramac Racing team in 2021. It was also the first title sponsor for the 2021 ESport/MotoGP Championship season. Yahoo! was an official partner for the September 2021 New York Fashion Week. In September 2021, Yahoo! partnered with Shopify. This connected online stores on Yahoo! Finance, AOL, and other places.
See also
- List of Yahoo!-owned sites and services
- List of search engines
