Yahoo is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, and its advertising platform, Yahoo Native. It is operated by Yahoo! Inc., which is 90% owned by Apollo Global Management and 10% by Verizon.
๐ Founding and Name Origin
Yahoo was established by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994 and was one of the pioneers of the early Internet era in the 1990s. The word โyahooโ is a backronym for โYet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracleโ or โYet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.โ
Founders Filo and Yang insist they mainly selected the name because they liked the slang definition of a โyahooโ meaning โrude, unsophisticated, uncouth.โ This meaning derives from the Yahoo race of fictional beings from Gulliverโs Travels.
๐ Early Development and Growth
In January 1994, Jerry Yang and David Filo created a website named โJerry and Davidโs guide to the World Wide Web.โ The site was a human-edited web directory, organized in a hierarchy. In March 1994, it was renamed โYahoo!โ and became known as the Yahoo Directory.
Yahoo was incorporated on March 2, 1995. In 1995, a search engine function called Yahoo Search was introduced. Yahoo soon became the first popular online directory and search engine on the World Wide Web.
๐ Public Offering and Acquisitions
Yahoo became a public company via an initial public offering in April 1996 and its stock price rose 600% within two years. By 1998, Yahoo was the most popular starting point for web users, receiving 95 million page views per day. Yahooโs two biggest acquisitions were made in 1999: Geocities for $3.6 billion and Broadcast.com for $5.7 billion.
๐ Leadership Changes and Challenges
Carol Bartz replaced Yang as CEO in January 2009. In September 2011, after failing to meet targets, she was fired. In April 2012, after the appointment of Scott Thompson as CEO, several key executives resigned. On May 13, 2012, Thompson was fired.
On July 15, 2012, Marissa Mayer was appointed president and CEO of Yahoo. In June 2013, Yahoo acquired blogging site Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash. By December 2015, Mayer was criticized as performance declined.
๐ Data Breaches and Acquisitions
The company reported two major data breaches of user account data to hackers during the second half of 2016. On July 25, 2016, Verizon Communications announced the acquisition of Yahooโs core Internet business for $4.83 billion. On June 13, 2017, Verizon completed the acquisition of Yahoo and Marissa Mayer resigned.
In September 2021, investment funds managed by Apollo Global Management acquired 90% of Yahoo. In 2023, Yahoo announced that it would cut 20% of its workforce.
| Year | Event | Key Figure | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1994 | Yahoo founded | Jerry Yang & David Filo | Pioneer of early Internet era |
| 1996 | Initial public offering | Yahoo Inc. | Stock price rose 600% in two years |
| 2008 | Microsoft bid rejected | Microsoft & Yahoo | Bid of $44.6 billion rejected |
| 2017 | Verizon acquisition completed | Verizon & Marissa Mayer | Core business sold for $4.83 billion |