Yahoo!

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the corporation. For the search engine, see Yahoo! Search. For other uses,
see Yahoo (disambiguation).

Yahoo! Inc.

Headquarters

Sunnyvale, California, U.S.

Area served

Worldwide

Key people

Maynard Webb
(Chairman)
Marissa Mayer
(CEO)
David Filo
(Chief Yahoo)[1]

Products

Revenue

Operating income

See Yahoo! products

4.61 billion (2014)[2]

$589 million (2013)[3]

7.52 billion (2014)[4]

Net income

US$9.6billion (2014)[5]

Total assets

US$38.74 billion (2014)[6]

Total equity

Number of employees

12,200 (Dec 2013)[3]

Subsidiaries

Yahoo! subsidiaries

Website

www.yahoo.com

Yahoo! India Bangalore office

Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational Internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale,

California. It is globally known for its Web portal, search engine Yahoo Search, and related services,
includingYahoo Directory, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo
Answers, advertising, online mapping, video sharing,fantasy sports and its social media website. It is
one of the most popular sites in the United States. According to news sources, roughly 700 million
people visit Yahoo websites every month. Yahoo itself claims it attracts "more than half a billion
consumers every month in more than 30 languages."
[7]

[8][9]

[10]

Yahoo was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994 and was incorporated on March
1, 1995. Marissa Mayer, a former Googleexecutive, serves as CEO and President of the company.

[11]

According to comScore, Yahoo during July 2013 surpassed Google on the number of United States
visitors to its Web sites for the first time since May 2011, set at 196 million United States visitors,
having increased by 21 percent in a year.
[12]

Contents
[hide]

1 History and growth

2 Products and services

o

2.1 Storing personal information and tracking usage

2.2 Communication

2.3 Content

2.4 Co-branded Internet services

2.5 Mobile services

2.6 Commerce

2.7 Small business

2.8 Advertising

2.9 GeoPlanet

2.10 Yahoo Next

2.11 Yahoo BOSS

2.12 Yahoo Meme

2.13 Y!Connect

2.14 Yahoo Accessibility

2.15 Yahoo Axis

2.16 Yahoo SearchMonkey

2.17 Defunct services

2.17.1 Twitter slide leak on upcoming changes to Yahoo

3 Privacy

4 Criticism

5 Executives
o

5.1 Board of Directors (current)

5.2 Board of Directors (past)

5.3 Chief Executive Officers

6 Yahoo International

7 Logos and themes

8 See also

9 References

10 External links

History and growth

Main article: History of Yahoo
See also: Timeline of Yahoo

Jerry Yang and David Filo, the founders of Yahoo

In January 1994, Yang and Filo were electrical engineering graduate students atStanford
University when they created a website named "Jerry and David's guide to the World Wide Web".
The site was a directory of other websites, organized in a hierarchy, as opposed to a searchable
index of pages. In March 1994, "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" was renamed
"Yahoo!"
The "yahoo.com" domain was created on January 18, 1995.

[13]

[14]

[15][16]

[17]

The word "yahoo" is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle". The term
"hierarchical" described how the Yahoo database was arranged in layers of subcategories. The term
"oracle" was intended to mean "source of truth and wisdom", and the term "officious", rather than
being related to the word's normal meaning, described the many office workers who would use the
Yahoo database while surfing from work. However, Filo and Yang insist they mainly selected the
name because they liked the slang definition of a "yahoo" (used by college students in David Filo's
native Louisiana in the late 1980s and early 1990s to refer to an unsophisticated, rural Southerner):
"rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." Filo's college girlfriend often referred to Filo as a "yahoo." This
meaning derives from the Yahoo race of fictional beings from Gulliver's Travels.
[18]

[19]

Yahoo grew rapidly throughout the 1990s. Like many search engines and Web directories, Yahoo
added a web portal. By 1998, Yahoo! was the most popular starting point for web users. It also
made many high-profile acquisitions. Its stock price skyrocketed during the dot-com bubble, Yahoo
stocks closing at an all-time high of $118.75 a share on January 3, 2000. However, after the dot-com
bubble burst, it reached a post-bubble low of $8.11 on September 26, 2001.
[20]

[21]

In 2000, Yahoo began using Google for search. Over the next four years, it developed its own search
technologies, which it began using in 2004. In response to Google's Gmail, Yahoo began to offer
unlimited email storage in 2007. The company struggled through 2008, with several large layoffs.
[citation

needed]

In February 2008, Microsoft Corporation made an unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo for US$44.6
billion. Yahoo formally rejected the bid, claiming that it "substantially undervalues" the company and
was not in the interest of its shareholders. Three years later, Yahoo had a market capitalization of
US$22.24 billion. Carol Bartz replaced Yang as CEO in January 2009. In September 2011, she
was removed from her position at Yahoo by the company's chairman Roy Bostock, and CFO Tim
Morse was named as Interim CEO of the company.
[22]

[23]

In early 2012, after the appointment of Scott Thompson as CEO, rumors began to spread about
looming layoffs. Several key executives, such as Chief Product Officer Blake Irving left. On April 4,
2012, Yahoo announced a cut of 2,000 jobs or about 14 percent of its 14,100 workers. The cut is
[24]

expected to save around US$375 million annually after the layoffs are completed at end of 2012. In
an email sent to employees in April 2012, Thompson reiterated his view that customers should come
first at Yahoo. He also completely reorganized the company.
[25]

[26]

On May 13, 2012, Yahoo issued a press release stating that Thompson was no longer with the
company, and would immediately be replaced on an interim basis by Ross Levinsohn, recently
appointed head of Yahoo's new Media group.
Thompson's total compensation for his 130-day
tenure with Yahoo was at least $7.3 million.
[26][27][28]

[29]

On July 16, 2012, Marissa Mayer was appointed President and CEO of Yahoo, effective the
following day.
On May 19, 2013 the Yahoo board approved a US$1.1 billion purchase of blogging site Tumblr, and
the company's CEO and founder David Karp will remain a large shareholder. The announcement
reportedly signifies a changing trend in the technology industry, as large corporations like Yahoo,
Facebook, and Google acquire start-up Internet companies that generate low amounts of revenue as
a way in which to connect with sizeable, fast-growing online communities. The Wall Street
Journal stated that the purchase of Tumblr would satisfy the company's need for "a thriving socialnetworking and communications hub."
On May 20, the company announced the acquisition of
Tumblr officially. The company also announced plans to open a San Francisco office in July 2013.
[30][31]

[32]

[33]

On August 2, 2013, Yahoo Inc. announced the acquisition of social Web browser concern RockMelt.
With the acquisition, the RockMelt team, including the concern's CEO Eric Vishria and CTO Tim
Howes, will be the part of Yahoo team. As a result, all the RockMelt applications and existing Web
services were terminated on August 31.
[34]

Data collated by comScore during July 2013 revealed that more people in the U.S. visited Yahoo
Web sites during the month in comparison to Google Web sites; the occasion was the first time that
Yahoo outperformed Google since 2011. The data did not incorporate visit statistics for the Yahooowned Tumblr site or mobile phone usage.
[35]

On March 12, 2014, Yahoo officially announced its partnership with Yelp, Inc., which will help Yahoo
boost its local search results to better compete with services like Google.
[36]

On November 11, 2014, Yahoo announced it would be acquiring video ad company BrightRoll for
$640 million. Video is one of the company's key growth areas and the acquisition will make Yahoo's
video ad platform the largest in the U.S.
[37]

On November 21, 2014, it was announced that Yahoo! had acquired Cooliris

[38]

Products and services

Main article: List of Yahoo-owned sites and services

The front page of the Yahoo website on 4th August 2014

Yahoo operates a portal that provides the latest news, entertainment, and sports information. The
portal also gives users access to other Yahoo services like Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Maps, Yahoo
Finance, Yahoo Groups and Yahoo Messenger.

Storing personal information and tracking usage