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What Does ‘Yahoo’ Stand For?

Learn the history behind the Yahoo name

Yahoo stands for «Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.» Learn more about the meaning of Yahoo and how it became a household name.

Information in this article is about the company Yahoo, which is sometimes spelled with an exclamation mark (Yahoo!).

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images


The Meaning Behind Yahoo’s Full Name

This odd name was coined in 1994 by two electrical engineering Ph.D. candidates at Stanford University, David Filo and Jerry Yang. The original name for what is now known as the Yahoo search engine was «David’s and Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web.» Realizing they needed a better name, Filo and Yang turned to the dictionary and chose «yahoo» because it was a word that anyone can say and remember with ease.

The longer title, «Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle,» was decided on later because it perfectly described Filo and Yang’s search engine. «Hierarchical» described how the Yahoo database was arranged in directory layers. «Officious» refers to the office workers who used the database. And, «oracle» was intended to mean «source of truth and wisdom.»

How Yahoo Was Created

The World Wide Web was only five years old and still relatively small in 1994, but with thousands of websites being created every day, it was becoming difficult to navigate. Thus, Filo and Yang were inspired to make their own database for the web. In their own words, they were “just trying to take all that stuff and organize it to make it useful.»

Filo and Yang spent many nights compiling a list of their favorite websites for the Yahoo database. The list was manageable at first, but it quickly became too large to navigate easily. The list was divided into categories, which were soon split into subcategories. The database continued to grow and eventually evolved into the context-based search engine it is today.

The Growth and Expansion of Yahoo

Yahoo’s audience grew largely by word of mouth. Within a year, the Stanford network became so clogged with Yahoo web search traffic that Filo and Yang had to move their Yahoo database to the Netscape offices.

Having recognized Yahoo’s potential and incorporating it in March 1995, Filo and Yang left their graduate studies to work on Yahoo full time. In April 1995, the investors of Sequoia Capital funded Yahoo with an initial investment of nearly $2 million. Filo and Yang also hired Tim Koogle as CEO and Jeffrey Mallett as COO.

More funding came later in 1995 from investors Reuters Ltd. and Softbank. With a team of 49 employees, Yahoo went IPO in April 1996. In 1997, the company launched an email service, Yahoo Mail.

Today, Yahoo, Inc. is a leading global internet communications, commerce, and media company that offers a variety of network services to millions each month worldwide. Its creators never went back to finish their Ph.D. studies, but they both have been ranked by Forbes as two of the 400 wealthiest men in America.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yahoo!

Yahoo! (2019).svg
Type of business Subsidiary

Type of site

Web portal and online services
Founded January 1994; 29 years ago
Headquarters

Sunnyvale, California

,

United States

Area served Worldwide
Owners
  • Apollo Global Management (90%)
  • Verizon Communications (10%)
Founder(s)
  • Jerry Yang
  • David Filo
Products List of products
Revenue $7.4 billion (2020)[1]
Employees 8,600 (2017)[2]
Parent
  • Yahoo! Inc. (1995–2017, 2021–present)
  • Verizon Communications (2017–2021)
URL www.yahoo.com Edit this at Wikidata
Advertising Yahoo! Ad Tech[3]
Registration Optional
Current status Active

Yahoo! (, styled yahoo! in its logo)[4][5] is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo! Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Management and 10% by Verizon Communications.

It provides a web portal, search engine Yahoo Search, and related services, including My Yahoo!, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports and its advertising platform, Yahoo! Native.

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.[6] However, usage declined in the late 2000s as some services discontinued and it lost market share to Facebook and Google.[7][8]

History

Founding

The Yahoo home page in 1994, when it was a directory. A search engine was added in 1995.

In January 1994, Yang and Filo were electrical engineering graduate students at Stanford University, when they created a website named «Jerry and David’s guide to the World Wide Web».[9][10][11][12] The site was a human-edited web directory, 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!» and became known as the Yahoo Directory.[10][13][14][15][16] The «yahoo.com» domain was registered on January 18, 1995.[17]

The word «yahoo» is a backronym for «Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle»[18] or «Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle».[19] 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.[20] 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.»[21] This meaning derives from the Yahoo race of fictional beings from Gulliver’s Travels.

Yahoo was incorporated on March 2, 1995. In 1995, a search engine function, called Yahoo Search, was introduced. This allowed users to search Yahoo Directory.[22][23] Yahoo soon became the first popular online directory and search engine on the World Wide Web.[24]

Expansion

Map showing localized versions of Yahoo! web portals, as of 2023

Yahoo grew rapidly throughout the 1990s. Yahoo became a public company via an initial public offering in April 1996 and its stock price rose 600% within two years.[25] Like many search engines and web directories, Yahoo added a web portal, putting it in competition with services including Excite, Lycos, and America Online.[26] By 1998, Yahoo was the most popular starting point for web users,[27] and the human-edited Yahoo Directory the most popular search engine,[15] receiving 95 million page views per day, triple that of rival Excite.[25] It also made many high-profile acquisitions. Yahoo began offering free e-mail from October 1997 after the acquisition of RocketMail, which was then renamed to Yahoo Mail.[28] In 1998, Yahoo replaced AltaVista as the crawler-based search engine underlying the Directory with Inktomi.[29] Yahoo’s two biggest acquisitions were made in 1999: Geocities for $3.6 billion[30] and Broadcast.com for $5.7 billion.[31]

Its stock price skyrocketed during the dot-com bubble, closing at an all-time high of $118.75/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.[32]

Yahoo began using Google for search in June 2000.[33][34] Over the next four years, it developed its own search technologies, which it began using in 2004 partly using technology from its $280 million acquisition of Inktomi in 2002.[35] In response to Google’s Gmail, Yahoo began to offer unlimited email storage in 2007. In 2008, the company laid off hundreds of people as it struggled from competition.[36]

In February 2008, Microsoft made an unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo for $44.6 billion.[37][38] Yahoo rejected the bid, claiming that it «substantially undervalues» the company and was not in the interest of its shareholders. Although Microsoft increased its bid to $47 billion, Yahoo insisted on another 10%+ increase to the offer and Microsoft cancelled the offer in May 2008.[39][40][41][42]

Carol Bartz, who had no previous experience in Internet advertising, replaced Yang as CEO in January 2009.[43][44] In September 2011, after failing to meet targets, she was fired by chairman Roy J. Bostock; CFO Tim Morse was named as Interim CEO of the company.[45][46]

In April 2012, after the appointment of Scott Thompson as CEO, several key executives resigned, including chief product officer Blake Irving.[47][48] On April 4, 2012, Yahoo announced 2,000 layoffs,[49] or about 14% of its 14,100 workers by the end of year, expected to save around $375 million annually.[50] 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.[51]

On May 13, 2012, Thompson was fired and was replaced on an interim basis by Ross Levinsohn, recently appointed head of Yahoo’s new Media group. Several associates of Third Point Management, including Daniel S. Loeb were nominated to the board of directors.[52][51][53][54] Thompson’s total compensation for his 130-day tenure with Yahoo was at least $7.3 million.[55]

On July 15, 2012, Marissa Mayer was appointed president and CEO of Yahoo, effective July 17, 2012.[56][57]

In June 2013, Yahoo acquired blogging site Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash, with Tumblr’s CEO and founder David Karp continuing to run the site.[58][59][60][61] In July 2013, Yahoo announced plans to open an office in San Francisco.[62]

On August 2, 2013, Yahoo acquired Rockmelt; its staff was retained, but all of its existing products were terminated.[63]

Data collated by comScore during July 2013 revealed that, during the month, more people in the U.S. visited Yahoo websites than Google; the first time that Yahoo outperformed Google since 2011.[64] The data did not count mobile usage, nor Tumblr.[65]

Mayer also hired Katie Couric to be the anchor of a new online news operation and started an online food magazine. However, by January 2014, doubts about Mayer’s progress emerged when Mayer fired her own first major hire, Henrique de Castro.[66]

On December 12, 2014, Yahoo acquired video advertising provider BrightRoll for $583 million.[67]

On November 21, 2014, Yahoo acquired Cooliris.[68]

Decline, security breaches, and sale

By December 2015, Mayer was criticized as performance declined.[69][70][71][72] Mayer was ranked as the least likable CEO in tech.[73][74]

On February 2, 2016, Mayer announced layoffs amounting to 15% of the Yahoo! workforce.[75]

On July 25, 2016, Verizon Communications announced the acquisition of Yahoo’s core Internet business for $4.83 billion.[76][77][78][79] The deal excluded Yahoo’s 15% stake in Alibaba Group and 35.5% stake in Yahoo Japan.[80][81]

On February 21, 2017, as a result of the Yahoo data breaches, Verizon lowered its purchase price for Yahoo by $350 million and reached an agreement to share liabilities regarding the data breaches.[82][83]

On June 13, 2017, Verizon completed the acquisition of Yahoo and Marissa Mayer resigned.[84][85]

Yahoo, AOL, and HuffPost were to continue operating under their own names, under the umbrella of a new company, Oath Inc., later called Verizon Media.[86][87]

The parts of the original Yahoo! Inc. which were not purchased by Verizon Communications were renamed Altaba, which later liquidated, making a final distribution in October 2020.[88]

In September 2021, investment funds managed by Apollo Global Management acquired 90% of Yahoo.[89][90]

In November 2021, Yahoo announced that it was ceasing its operations in mainland China due to an increasingly challenging business and legal environment.[91] Previously, the company has discontinued China Yahoo! Mail on August 20, 2013.[92]

In 2023, Yahoo announced that it would be cutting 20% of its workforce. The move follows mass layoffs from other tech giants including Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Inc, Meta, and Amazon. The company is set to lay off roughly 1,000 staff members of their 8,600 workers.[93]

Chief executive officers

Eleven chief executives and interim leaders have led the Yahoo companies since 1995. They are:

  • Jim Lanzone, CEO of Yahoo Inc. (2021–present)[94]
  • Guru Gowrappan, CEO of Oath Inc., Verizon Media, and Yahoo (2018–2021)[95][96]
  • Tim Armstrong, CEO of Oath Inc. (2017–2018)[97]
  • Marissa Mayer (2012–2017)[98]
  • 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)

Products and services

For a list of all current and defunct services offered by Yahoo, see List of Yahoo!-owned sites and services.

Data breaches

On September 22, 2016, Yahoo disclosed a data breach that occurred in late 2014, in which information associated with at least 500 million user accounts,[99][100] one of the largest breaches reported to date.[101] The United States indicted four men, including two employees of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), for their involvement in the hack.[102][103] On December 14, 2016, the company revealed that another separate data breach had occurred in 2014, with hackers obtaining sensitive account information, including security questions, to at least one billion accounts.[104] The company stated that hackers had utilized stolen internal software to forge HTTP cookies.[105][106]

On October 3, 2017, the company stated that all 3 billion of its user accounts were affected by the August 2013 theft.[107][108][109][110][111]

Criticism

DMCA notice to whistleblower

On November 30, 2009, Yahoo was criticized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for sending a DMCA notice to whistleblower website «Cryptome» for publicly posting details, prices, and procedures on obtaining private information pertaining to Yahoo’s subscribers.[112]

Censorship of private emails affiliated with Occupy Wall Street protests

After some concerns over censorship of private emails regarding a website affiliated with Occupy Wall Street protests were raised, Yahoo responded with an apology and explained it as an accident.[113][114][115]

Partners and sponsorships

The 2015 Dublin LGBTQ Pride Festival, sponsored by Yahoo

On September 11, 2001, Yahoo! announced its partnership with FIFA for the 2002 FIFA World Cup and 2006 FIFA World Cup tournaments. It was one of FIFA’s 15 partners at the tournaments. The deal included co-branding the organization’s websites.[116]

Yahoo! sponsored the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.[117]
NBC Sports Group aligned with Yahoo Sports the same year with content and program offerings on mobile and desktop platforms.[118]

Yahoo announced television video partnerships in 2013 with Condé Nast,[119] WWE, ABC NEWS, and CNBC.[120] Yahoo entered into a 10-year collaboration in 2014, as a founding partner of Levi’s Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers.[121]

The National Basketball Association partnered with Yahoo Sports to stream games, offer virtual and augmented-reality fan experiences, and in 2018 NBA League Pass.[122][123] Yahoo Sportsbook launched in November 2019, a collaboration with BetMGM.[124][125]

BuzzFeed acquired HuffPost from Yahoo in November 2020, in a stock deal with Yahoo as a minority shareholder.[126][127] The NFL partnered with Yahoo in 2020, to introduce a new «Watch Together» function on the Yahoo Sports app for interactive co-viewing through a synchronized livestream of local and primetime NFL games.[128] The Paley Center for Media collaborated with Verizon Media to exclusively stream programs on Yahoo platforms beginning in 2020.[129]

Yahoo became the main sponsor for the Pramac Racing team and the first title sponsor for the 2021 ESport/MotoGP Championship season.[130] Yahoo, the official partner for the September 2021 New York Fashion Week event also unveiled sponsorship for the Rebecca Minkoff collection via a NFT space.[131] In September 2021, it was announced that Yahoo partnered with Shopify, connecting the e-commerce merchants on Yahoo Finance, AOL and elsewhere.[132]

See also

  • List of Yahoo!-owned sites and services
  • List of search engines
  • Yahoo! litigation

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External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Yahoo!.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Yahoo!.

  • Official website Edit this at Wikidata
  • Yahoo! Products and Services
  • ALTABA and Yahoo! EDGAR Filing History

Yahoo Search Engine Malysia

Photo of Yahoo webpage on a monitor screen, circa Dec 11, 2013 in Johor, Malaysia. Yahoo! is an Internet portal that incorporates a search engine.

Key Points

  • Yahoo! was founded in January 1994. Its founders are Jerry Yang and David Filo, the two electrical engineers who created it as an essential collection of Yang and Filo’s favorite websites, with features such as a search engine, an e-mail service, a directory, and a news section.
  • The original title for yahoo was “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web”. The site was renamed Yahoo! as it rose in popularity, an abbreviation for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.” 
  • According to several stories, Yang and Filo put the exclamation mark to the end of Yahoo because a BBQ sauce manufacturer already held the name “Yahoo.”

What is Yahoo: Explained

Yahoo! is an Internet platform that features a search engine and a directory of World Wide Web sites arranged by topic categories in a hierarchy. It was created in 1994.

Quick Facts

Creator (person)
Jerry Yang and David Filo
Release Date
08/03/1988
Developed By (company)
Apollo Global Management

In the beginning of 1994 two Ph.D. candidates in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University— Jerry Yang (born November 6, 1968, in Taipei, Taiwan) and David Filo (born April 20, 1966, in Wisconsin) were looking for a single place to find useful Web sites and for a way to keep track of their personal interests on the Internet. As they didn’t manage to find such a tool, they decided to create their own. Thus the now ubiquitous web portal and a global brand Yahoo! began as a student hobby and evolved into a site, that has changed the way people communicate with each other, find and access information.

Filo and Yang started realization of his project in a campus trailer in February, 1994, and before long they were spending more time on their home-brewed lists of favorite links than on their doctoral dissertations. Eventually, Jerry and David’s lists became too long and unwieldy, and they broke them out into categories. When the categories became too full, they developed subcategories, thus the core concept behind Yahoo was born.

David Filo and Jerry Yang

David Filo and Jerry Yang co-created an Internet website called “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web” which was renamed “Yahoo!”

The Web site started out as Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web, but eventually received a new moniker with the help of a dictionary. Filo and Yang decided to select the name Yahoo, because they liked the general definition of the word (which comes from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, where a Yahoo is a legendary being): rude, unsophisticated, uncouth. Later the name Yahoo was popularized as an bacronym for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle

It serves as a directory for both novice and experienced Web users, providing a structured view of hundreds of thousands of websites and millions of pages. It also offers one of the most effective methods for searching the Internet for a certain topic. If a search argument does not go to a Yahoo subject page, it will still lead to results from the six or seven major search engine sites that Yahoo! connects to.

The majority of the company’s revenue comes from search and display adverts. The remainder is revenue from listings-based services, transactions, royalties, patent licensing, and fees.

It offers a web portal; a search engine called Yahoo Search, and other services, such as mail services (Yahoo! Mail), news services (Yahoo! News), finance services (Yahoo! Finance)

What happened to Yahoo!?

The search engine was initially was thought of as a futuristic platform and gained fame and profits. However, the company suffered due to letting go of missed opportunities and, for many years, battled Google, a significant search engine competitor. Yahoo!, as a whole, lacked a clear vision for the company’s ultimate goal from the start. The company’s ultimate doom was predicted years ago by numerous former workers due to a run of bad Execs who lacked a vision for the future.

Yahoo! launched Yahoo! Instant Messenger, purchased the Internet photo network Flickr, added a slew of new services, and purchased a 40% stake in Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce startup. Yet, despite these moves, many of Yahoo! ‘s competitors have survived.

The company appointed Marissa Mayer as CEO and president in 2012 amidst mounting financial difficulties. Even though she was instrumental in creating Google, her efforts to bring Yahoo! around were largely unsuccessful. Verizon Communications stated in 2016 that it would buy the company’s main assets.

The final sale, which took place in 2017, was estimated to be worth $4.48 billion. Yahoo! was later absorbed into Oath, a newly formed subsidiary.

Verizon, In May, announced that it was selling the properties to Apollo Global Management for $5 billion, less than half of the almost $9 billion the telecom giant paid for them originally and a fraction of the hundreds of billions the two companies were valued at their peaks. 

Yahoo! is currently owned by Apollo Global Management, will now be administered independently by Apollo Funds, and overseen by CEO Guru Gowrappan.

The Difference between Yahoo and Google

Google and Yahoo! are the most popular search engines, with the largest market stocks, and both play a significant role in the computer software sector. They have expanded their services and have been employing the same technology, but they deliver different information. However, the features, tools, and even search results of Google and Yahoo are significantly different since each business provides a wholly separate user experience. Yahoo, for instance, has news on its top page, but Google does not. 

Search Algorithm

Google and Yahoo! both employ a set of instructions known as algorithms. Of course, the most crucial part of every search engine is the discreet algorithm. However, the Google algorithm is regarded to be superior to Yahoos. This is due to its preference for high-quality material over well-established connections and pages, unlike Yahoo’s preference for ancient and well-established websites.

Search Results

Google and Yahoo! not only locate web pages, but they also show them. Both rank URLs based on the content they include and the information a user is looking for. Page ranking is important since most users want to get information as fast as possible and prefer to look on the first page of results. Google and Yahoo! both index and search the same websites. However, Google provides users with relevant and accurate results and provides them with quick results. In comparison, Yahoo! ‘s homepage attracts users with an array of interactive features such as news, sports, weather, and so on. Users find it simple to get information and connect to the rest of the world.

Features and Tools

Both Google and Yahoo! provide their users with several unique tools and services. For example, Google’s ‘Maps’ tool allows users to discover any location and even zoom in to view the real picture of most streets, while Yahoo! ‘s ‘hotel finding tool’ allows users to see hotel pricing and availability. Google and Yahoo also provide shopping features that allow customers to compare costs across numerous retailers.

Design Difference

In search engines, design refers to the information available on each website rather than its appearance. So, for instance, if a user searches for a famous musician, the search engine will present information with videos of the sought figure at the top of the page, whereas Google would provide the same results.

Yahoo Release History

The origins of the Yahoo! Search may be traced back to Jerry Yang and David Filo, then Stanford University students, who founded Yahoo! Directory in 1994. In 1995, they launched Yahoo! Search, which allowed users to search the Yahoo! Directory. Despite not being a genuine Web crawler search engine, it was the first popular search engine on the Web. They later licensed other firms’ Web search engines.

Intikomi (2002): The company purchased its Web search technology to deliver its own search engine results. They purchased Inktomi, a “behind the scenes” or OEM search engine provider whose results are shown on other firms’ websites and once powered Yahoo!

Overture Services, Inc. (2003): They bought Overture Services, Inc., which contained AlltheWeb and AltaVista’s search engines. Although Yahoo! possessed various search engines, they didn’t use them on the main yahoo.com website at first and instead relied on Google’s search engine.

Web crawler: The company launched its own web crawler-based search engine. They developed a crawler termed Yahoo! by combining the skills of search engine firms they had purchased and their past research. All of the company’s websites with a web search capability were updated with the new search engine results. The company also began to sell search engine results to other businesses for display on their websites. Unfortunately, their partnership with Google ended at that point, and the two former allies became fierce rivals.

Search Assist (2007): In October 2007, Yahoo! Search was changed to match the revamped Yahoo! home page with a more contemporary look. Search Assist was also included, which delivers real-time query recommendations and related concepts as you search.

Yahoo! Search BOSS (2008): Yahoo! Search announced the launch of a new service named Yahoo! Search BOSS (“Build your Own Search Engine”). Through this feature, Developers can leverage the Yahoo! method for indexing information and photos to design their own customized search engine. 

Bing (2010): Microsoft announced an agreement in which it would take over the functional operation of Yahoo! Search and form the Microsoft Search Alliance. This joint venture would sell advertising on both Yahoo! Search and Bing. In October 2010, all Yahoo! sponsored ad clients were transferred to Microsoft adCenter (now Bing Ads). 

Yelp (2014): Yahoo announced a collaboration with Yelp to incorporate Yelp’s reviews and user-contributed photographs into Yahoo! Search (as Bing had previously done).

Bing modified (2015): The Microsoft agreement was changed in April 2015, mandating Bing results on just the “majority” of desktop traffic, allowing Yahoo to engage in non-exclusive partnerships for search services on mobile platforms and the rest of desktop traffic. In addition, the agreement allows any party to terminate the contract with four months’ notice. In October 2015, Yahoo and Google announced a deal for Google to supply advertising, Search, and image search services to Yahoo Search through the end of 2018. As a result, Yahoo! Search is now again powered by Bing as of October 2021.

Up Next…

Interested in finding out more about awesome technological strides that changed the course of history? Read about them in these articles here.

  • Wikipedia: Complete Guide, History, Products, Founding, And More: Inspired by an earlier model of encyclopedia and launched in 2001, it currently boasts 14.4 million articles. Here’s all you need to know about this immense depository of information.
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What is Yahoo?

Yahoo, or Yahoo.com, is a web services provider that offers both a search engine and a directory of World Wide Web pages organized in a hierarchy of topic categories.

While the Yahoo web portal started off as a web directory, it soon added other services such as email, news and finance. Most notable, Yahoo Search is a competitor to sites like Google Search and Microsoft Bing.

Verizon acquired Yahoo in 2017. Verizon sold Yahoo — as part of its Verizon Media division, which also included AOL, Engadget, TechCrunch and a digital advertising platform — to Apollo Global Management in 2021.

Yahoo products and services

In addition to its web search engine and directory, Yahoo account holders can access other web-based services including the following:

  • Yahoo Mail, which provides free email accounts similar to Gmail and AOL, with unlimited storage;
  • Yahoo Finance, a website that covers business and financial news; and
  • Yahoo Sports, a sports news website.

Yahoo also provides online news, weather forecasts and horoscopes.

Yahoo logo

The history of Yahoo

Officially launched in 1995, Yahoo began as the bookmark list of two Stanford University graduate students, David Filo and Jerry Yang. After putting their combined bookmark lists organized by categories on a college site, the list began to grow into an internet phenomenon.

According to the site, Yahoo stands for «Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.»

It became the first such directory with a large following. Filo and Yang postponed their graduate work and became part of a public offering for a multimillion-dollar corporation.

Yahoo’s growth

Over the years, Yahoo has acquired a number of other companies, including GeoCities, Flickr and Tumblr.

In 2008, Yahoo was the most visited website in the United States. However, it has since fallen to fourth place, behind Google, YouTube, Facebook and Amazon.

In 2012, Yahoo appointed Marissa Mayer as its new chief executive officer (CEO). Mayer, who served as CEO through 2017, is credited with revitalizing the company by bringing in new talent and launching new products, such as Yahoo News Digest and Yahoo Weather.

In 2016, Yahoo agreed to sell its core business to Verizon for $4.83 billion. The deal included Yahoo’s search engine, email service, digital content and advertising technology businesses. However, the deal excluded Yahoo’s 15% share in Alibaba Group and 35.5% share in Yahoo Japan.

In 2021, Verizon sold Yahoo as part of its Verizon Media division to Apollo Global Management for $5 billion.

Yahoo’s challenges

Yahoo has also seen its share of challenges.

In 2009, Yahoo received criticism from the Electronic Frontier Foundation for sending a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice to a whistleblower website that had publicly disclosed Yahoo’s guidelines for providing its subscribers’ private information to law enforcement agencies.

In 2013, Yahoo suffered the largest known data breach in history, which affected more than 3 billion Yahoo user accounts. However, the breach wasn’t fully disclosed until 2017.

The breach led to various class-action lawsuits being filed against Yahoo, as well as a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. Due to this, the Verizon acquisition price was lowered by $350 million, and an agreement was reached to share the liabilities associated with the data breach.

In 2016, Yahoo laid off 15% of its staff.

Despite all these challenges, Yahoo remains one of the most popular web service providers in the world.

Learn about the 10 biggest data breaches in history and how to prevent them and explore search beyond search engines.

This was last updated in January 2023


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