A

Project Report on
Yahoo: End of an era

Yahoo: End of an era

I.

Introduction

Yahoo Inc. also known as Yahoo! is an American Multinational Technology

Company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Yahoo is an acronym of Yet
Another Hierarchical Organized Oracle. The growth and departure of Yahoo can
be described by a time line as

Birth

Achievement

Change

Dissolution

A. Birth:
It was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo Ph.D. candidates in Electrical
Engineering at Stanford University, in January 1994 and was incorporated on March
2, 1995. Earlier they created a website named "Jerry and David's guide to the World
Wide Web was one of the pioneers of the early internet era in the 1990.

B. Achievements:
Yahoo rose to heights rapidly by following the trends of many web search engines
and web directories throughout the 1990s. During 1998 it became the most popular
starting point of web users. It also made significant acquisitions due to which its
stock prices skyrocketed during Dot Com bubble burst.
On May 19, 2013 the Yahoo board sanctioned the acquisition of blogging site Tumblr
at around $1.1 bn along with company's CEO and founder David Karp being 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 basically generate low amounts of revenues. This
can be attributed to the their mission and vision that provides them and opportunity
to connect with sizeable, fast-growing online communities.

C. Changes and recent developments:

On August 2, 2013, Yahoo Inc. announced the acquisition of social Web browsing
company RockMelt. As a result, all the RockMelt applications, software and existing
Web services were dissolved in Yahoo Inc. on August 31.

On March 12, 2014, Yahoo officially declared its strategic alliance with Yelp, Inc.
Yahoo observed this partnership as a key mover in boosting its local search results
so that it can better compete with services like Google.
On November 11, 2014, Yahoo announced its acquisition of video ad company
BrightRoll for $640 million. Video was one of the company's key growth areas and
the acquisition was speculated to make Yahoo's video ad platform the largest in the
US
On November 21, 2014, it was announced that Yahoo had acquired Cooliris.

D. Departure of Yahoo:
In July 2016, Verizon bought Yahoo Inc. for $4.83 bn terminating its year long
dominance in the internet market. Verizon has bought Yahoos core business that
includes Yahoos advertising, content, search & mobile activities

II.

Products and services offered:

1. Communication
Yahoo provided Internet communication services such as Yahoo Messenger and
Yahoo Mail. It also provided social networking platforms and user-generated
contents, including applications such as My Web, Yahoo Personals, Yahoo 360,
Delicious, Flickr, and Yahoo Buzz. However on April 21, 2011 it closed Yahoo Buzz,
MyBlogLog, and numerous other products.

2. Content
Yahoo partnered with several content providers in products such as Yahoo Sports,
Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Music, Yahoo Movies, Yahoo Weather, Yahoo News, Yahoo!
Answers and Yahoo Games to provide news and related content. It offered a
personalization service, My Yahoo, which enabled users to combine their favorite
Yahoo features, content feeds and information onto a single page.

3. Mobile services
Yahoo Mobile offered emailing, instant messaging, and mobile blogging, as well as
information services, searches and alerts. Services for the camera phone include
entertainment and ring tones. On March 20, 2007. Yahoo introduced its Internet
search system, called One Search, for mobile phones. The contents include news
headlines, images from Flickr, business listings, local weather and links to other
sites.

4. Commerce
In commercial transaction services Yahoo offered shopping services such as Yahoo!
Shopping, Yahoo Autos, Yahoo Real Estate and Yahoo Travel, which enabled users to
gather relevant information and make commercial transactions and purchases
online. Yahoo Shopping was a price comparison service which used the Kelkoo price
comparison service that it acquired in April 2004

5. Small business
Yahoo provided business services such as Yahoo Domain Keys, Yahoo Web Hosting,
Yahoo Merchant Solutions, Yahoo Business Email and Yahoo Store to small business
owners and professionals. It allowed them to build their own online stores using
Yahoo's tools.

6. Advertising
Yahoo Search Marketing provided services such as Sponsored Search, Local
Advertising and Product/Travel/Directory Submit that let different businesses
advertise their products and services on the Yahoo network. After the closure of
"beta" version on April 30, 2010, the Yahoo Publisher Network was relaunched as an
advertising tool that allowed online publishers to monetize their websites through
the use of site-relevant advertisements.
On February 5 2007, Yahoo launched its new Internet advertisement sales system
called Panama. It allowed advertisers to search terms to trigger their ads on search
results pages. The system considered bids, ad quality, click through rates and other
factors in ranking ads. Through Panama, Yahoo aimed to provide more relevant
search results to users, a better overall experience, and to increase monetization.

III.

Competitive Analysis for Yahoo

YAHOO
Parent Company
Category
Sector
Tagline

Yahoo Inc.
Website Internet and computer
software.
Media and entertainment.
Search,Ads, and Apps

USP

Popular and trusted brand.

STP
Segment
Targeting
Positioning

Utilizing Internet computer user

Customer using products
Positioned as a democratic and
unbiased search engine.

SWOT ANALYSIS
Strength

Weakness

1. Simple and easy way to use

Interface
2. Fast and relevant search, Free
for
customers
3. Has over 13,000 employees
globally
in
the
organization
4. Integrated range of products
5. One of the most recognized
brands with over 350 million users
associated
with
it.
6. Yahoo is best known for its web
portal, search engine (Yahoo!
Search), Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo!
Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups,
Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online
mapping (Yahoo! Maps), video
sharing (Yahoo! Video), and social
media websites and services.
7. Yahoo! itself claims it attracts
"more
than
half
a
billion
consumers every month in more
than 30 languages.
1. Growing preference of people
using Google products due to its
simplicity
2. Tough competition from players
like Google, Facebook and MSN in
terms advertising avenues thereby

affects the revenues.

3. Does not offer customization to
users.
4. Yahoo losing market share to
Google.
Opportunity

Threats

1. The markets devoid of internet

especially in the emerging
economies.
2. Acquiring more partnerships
with different companies to widen
the market of integrated products.
3. Ads from businesses not having
online presence.
1. Can be subjected to
manipulation and misuse.
2. Risk of being involved into legal
intricacies due to breach of privacy.
3. Newly emerging competitive
search engines and Social
networking sites are working as
advertisement markets which is
stealing the share.
4. Restrictions applied by
Governments in terms of content.

Competition
Competitor

1.Google search engine

2. BING(Microsoft search engine)

Competition in mail service

All four mail services shares the same basic template, with an email list pane
in the centre and folders on the left. Account options in settings are located
in the upper right corner. In Gmail and Yahoo Mail, a search bar is displayed
prominently at the top of the page, where as smaller bar can be seen at the
top
left
corner
in
Outlook.com
and
AOL
Mail.

Yahoo Mail sports a very clean, clutter-free design. The folders on the left
Inbox, Drafts, Sent, Spam and Trash are clearly labelled, as well as their
additional folders can be found in a drop-down menu. Just above the folders
is the Compose button, which replaces the email list pane with a blank email
when clicked. Above that are tabs that let you view Mail, Contacts, Calendar,
Notepad and Yahoo Messenger. The icons make it clear which tab you're
clicking on, but if you're still confused you can however over them and tool
tips will appear.

Gmail's designing is slightly less intuitive as compared to others . Common

email labels (different than folders, see Organization below) like Inbox, Sent
Mail and Drafts are displayed on the left, but other labels such as Spam and
Trash are accessed via a drop-down menu that's hidden behind the Hangouts
pane, which shares the same space on the left side of the screen as the
labels. Hovering over any of the visible labels causes the Hangout pane to
shift downward, exposing the remaining labels.
Unfortunately, Google doesn't include any visual or textual indicators that
explain how this works, which can make it unnecessarily confusing for
neophytes. Furthermore, although you can remove the Hangouts pane by

clicking on a small chat icon at the bottom left of the screen, the icon is easy
to miss if you don't know to look for it.
Competition in advertisements
Depending on how you've configured your inbox, Gmail features two small
and also unobtrusive advertisement located just above and then below the
email list pane. These ads are text-only, and take up a single line of space.
However, if you are using the Gmail's new tabbed inbox, which separate your
emails into categories like Primary, Social and Promotions, you will not be
able to see any advertisements at all.
Outlook.com and AOL Mail feature a vertical banner advertisement on the
right, but theirs are much less prominent than the banner ad in Yahoo Mail.
Neither service displays ads in the email list pane or below the folders. Like
Yahoo, Microsoft offers an ad-free Outlook.com experience for $19.95 per
year.
Gmail, Yahoo Mail and AOL Mail feature interest-based advertising -- in
essence, the services scan your emails for keywords and then use that data
to load relevant ads. If you find this unnecessarily intrusive, all three services
allow you to opt out of interest-based ads. Outlook.com does not use
targeted advertising.

IV.

Present Scenario of Yahoo

As of today, Verizon has acquired yahoo for $4.8 Billion in cash which has
been going around for months in the bidding process. The areas which have
been sold are Yahoos advertising, content, search and mobile activities.
Last 5-6 years of Yahoos activities and news:

2011: In November, Yahoo acquired Interclick, behavior identification

and targeting technology developer.

2012: In March, Yahoo sold half of its stake to the Alibaba group for
$7.1 Billion in cash and stock.

2013: Yahoo acquired Tumblr.

2014: Yahoo acquired video streaming platform RayV, mobile

company Flurry and ads
s
Startup ClarityRay.

2016: Verizon bought Yahoo for $4.8 Billion.

V.

YAHOO buyout by VERIZON

Global Internet leader Yahoo finally sealed the deal to sell its core online assets,
ending a 20-year run as an independent company. US telecom giant Verizon
Communications bought Yahoo's search and advertising operations for $4.83
billion. The deal has marked a dramatic downfall for Yahoo, a company that once
ruled the early internet era, which had a valuation over $100 billion before the dotcom bubble burst in 2000 and which in 2008 spurned a $44 billion bid from
Microsoft. The series of events that led to historic merger and acquisition were:
1. US internet firm Yahoo announced in February that it was looking at
'strategic alternatives' for its core internet business. For the last few years
Yahoo had been struggling to keep up with the changing internet
advertising landscape, with some analysts argued that it had failed to
remain relevant in many of its core markets.
2. In 2012 Marissa Mayer, a former Google executive ,was hired as chief
executive to resurrect the company from the distressed business.
3. Yahoo had been in restructuring mode for nearly four years under Mayer.
After a few initial surges in profits, the company failed to give a tough
competition to its competitors.
4. When the bidding began in April, Verizon was the immediate front-runner
with a market capitalization of roughly $228 bn.
5. The US telecoms giant is expected to merge Yahoo with AOL, to create a
digital group capable of taking on the likes of Google and Facebook.
Verizon bought AOL - another faded internet star -in a $4.4 billion deal last
year, which gave it ownership of the Huffington Post, Techcrunch,
Engadget and other news sites.
6. The deal would allow Yahoo to separate its main assets from its holdings in
Chinese internet giant Alibaba, which accounts for most of Yahoo's $37
billion market value.

7. A host of other firms were reported to be interested in buying Yahoo's core

internet assets including AT&T, a consortium backed by investor Warren
Buffett and the owner of the Daily Mail.
8. Verizon is in a process of building a portfolio of online content. Its current
assets include Huffington Post and TechCrunch and its own mobile video
app, called go90. Acquiring this giant web portal will bring in millions more
Yahoo's loyal viewers.
9. Yahoo will change the name and become publicly traded investment
company.
10.The Verizon deal is the first major step toward unwinding Yahoo. Next up is
a trove of about 3,000 patents, which Yahoo is selling in a separate
auction, that is expected to fetch more than $1 billion

VI.

Implications
1. Impact on web space: The web space of Yahoo will remain intact
with it. Users will not have to change their email addresses. In fact,
Verizon looks forward to upgrade email accounts to give users
unlimited storage and more space for email attachments.
2. Other major competitors: The potential competitors can be AT&T
an another Telecom giant in US, Google, Microsoft along with its BING &
MSN search engine.
3. New Emerging Markets: The new avenues which Verizon is targeting
to enter are media & advertising industry, Real Estate and Finance. The
real estate and finance divisions were previously run by Yahoo but they
were shut down in Feb 2016.Verizon is expecting that Yahoos content
and advertising portfolio will enormously expand AOLS reach and
technology. In blogging arena Tumbler is facing stiff competition from
other popular sites like Twitter and Medium which are now becoming a
popular platform for long term writing.