Yahoo!
Yahoo! is a United States-based technology company that owns an Internet portal, a web directory, and a number of services such as the popular Yahoo! Its purpose is to "be the most essential global Internet service for consumers and businesses". It was founded in January 1994 by two Stanford University graduate students, Jerry Yang and David Filo. Yahoo! was incorporated as a company on March 2, 1995 and became publicly traded on April 12, 1996. The company has its corporate headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, United States. Yahoo! was one of the pioneers of the early Internet era in the 1990s.
According to third-party web analytics providers Alexa and SimilarWeb, Yahoo! was the most read news and media website, with more than 7 billion visits per month, ranking as the 6th most visited website globally in 2016.
On July 25, 2016, the purchase of Yahoo by Verizon was announced.
In 2017 Verizon acquired most of Yahoo's Internet business for $4.48 billion, excluding its stakes in Alibaba Group and Yahoo! Japan that were transferred to Yahoo's successor company, Altaba.
History
Yahoo! was initially called "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" ("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, the "Jerry and Davids Guide to the World Wide Web" was renamed "Yahoo!". Yahoo's human-edited directory, Yahoo! Directory, provided for users to browse the Internet, became its first product and the original purpose of the company. The domain "yahoo.com" it was created on January 18, 1995.
There are several versions about the origin of the name Yahoo!: the real version that circulates in the corporate Yahoo! in Sunnyvale, California is that it comes from the name of characters in the book Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, the Yahoos. The story goes that in the home of David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo!, his father called David and Jerry "a pair of Yahoos" because of their restless nature and they decide to use the name Yahoo! for your portal. In Swift's book, a Yahoo is a wild, dirty creature with nasty habits, who looks too much like a human being. Other versions claim that Yahoo! is nothing more than an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle", which would translate as 'Another oracle hierarchical officious more'. However, Filo and Yang insist that the name comes from the general definition of "yahoo" that was used in the university where the first one studied.
Yahoo! first appeared on Yang's personal computer, "Akebono" while the software and database in Filo's machine, "Konishiki," names that come from sumo wrestlers, a sport of which Filo and Yang are fans.
Expansion
Yahoo grew rapidly throughout the 1990s. Like many search engines and web directories, Yahoo added a web portal. In 1998, Yahoo was the most popular starting point for web users, and its web directory was the most popular search engine.
Yahoo! made its public appearance on the New York Stock Market on the NASDAQ Index on April 12, 1996, selling 2.6 million shares at $13 each.
As the popularity of Yahoo! increased, the range of services grew. This made Yahoo! in "the only place where anyone has to go to find anything they are looking for, communicate with anyone or buy anything." Among the services that today Yahoo! offers are: Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Games, Yahoo! Shopping, Yahoo! Auctions and Yahoo! Answers.
Yahoo! began making strategic contracts with telecommunications and local search companies worldwide, such as British Telecom in the United Kingdom, Rogers Communications in Canada, Ideas Interactivas (Yahoo! Useful Pages) in Mexico and SBC Communications in Canada. Its objective is to face its global competitors; Google, AOL, Terra, MSN and others.
Yahoo began using Google for search in 2000. Over the next four years, Yahoo developed its own search technologies, which it began using in 2004. In response to Google's Gmail, Yahoo began offering unlimited email storage. in 2007. The company struggled until 2008, with several large layoffs.
In order to increase its leadership in the search area of web pages (its main claim), Yahoo! made acquisitions like Inktomi in December 2002 and Overture in July 2003 (along with its subsidiaries Altavista, AllTheWeb), and made an alliance in Mexico with a company called Ideas Interactivas to launch a printed telephone directory under the Yahoo brand ! Useful pages, breaking the mold and complementing your local search strategy in the physical world, to compete with Google and the new MSN search function, but this business was unilaterally canceled in 2005 by Yahoo! México causing the bankruptcy of Ideas Interactivas, beginning a trial in 2011 and on November 28, 2012, a sentence was handed down that forced Yahoo! to pay 2.7 billion dollars to the Mexican company.
Currently the servers of Yahoo! They use the FreeBSD operating system.
In 2009, Yahoo announced that its first-quarter profits fell 78% from the same period in 2008, to $117.6 million, due to a sharp decline in its advertising business. The company, while it had CEO Carol Bartz, announced that it would lay off more than 5% of its staff, equivalent to 700 employees, adding to the 1,500 announced months earlier, to reduce costs.
In 2012 when Scott Thompson was CEO, the company laid off another 2,000 employees, or 14% of its global team.
Offer to purchase by Microsoft Corporation
On February 1, 2008, Microsoft declared its intention to buy Yahoo!, one of its biggest competitors, for $44.6 billion in cash, or $32 per share. This offer came at a difficult time for Yahoo!, that announced the dismissal of 7% of its workforce to try to restructure the company. From Yahoo!, the study of the offer by the company's Management was indicated. However, ten days later, Yahoo! decided to reject the offer, arguing that the figure detracts from the company's value since the money gain was very convenient for them.
On June 12, 2008, Yahoo! announced that it has terminated all negotiations with Microsoft regarding the purchase of all or part of the business (the search advertising area). The talks were held the previous weekend (June 8). Supposedly during the negotiations Microsoft informs Yahoo! that it no longer had an interest in buying the company at the previously offered price of $33 per share.
Yahoo!-Google Inc. Settlement
Yahoo! to deal with purchase proposals, it has entered into an alliance with its largest competitor Google, to advertise on search engines. According to what Google Inc. and Yahoo! said Thursday, June 12, 2008, they had reached an agreement under which Google Inc. will serve ads alongside some of the search results on Yahoo! and on some of its sites in the United States and Canada.
The 4-year deal extendable up to 10 years is non-exclusive and is aimed at improving Yahoo!'s finances, the company said it would generate an additional $250 million to $450 million in operating cash flow in the first year and in the event of a change of command of one of the two companies during the duration of the contract, 250 million dollars would be given to the other company.
The deal will also strengthen Google's dominance over the lucrative search advertising market. It was signed after Yahoo! will reject a proposal by Microsoft to buy its search business and a minority stake in the company.
According to many, this deal could end in some sort of merger of the internet giants.
Products and services
Yahoo has a portal that offers the latest news, entertainment and sports information. The portal also gave access to other Yahoo services such as Yahoo! Search, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Maps, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Groups, and Yahoo Messenger.
Starting November 2, 2021, Yahoo! stopped offering its services in China citing difficulties operating in the country.
Communication
Yahoo provided Internet communication services such as Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Mail. As of May 2007, their email service offers unlimited storage.
Yahoo provided social networking services and user-generated content, including products such as My Web, Yahoo Personals, Yahoo 360°, Delicious, Flickr, and Yahoo Buzz. Yahoo shut down Yahoo Buzz, MyBlogLog, and many other products on April 21, 2011.
Yahoo Photos was shut down on September 20, 2007, in favor of Flickr. On October 16, 2007, Yahoo announced that it would discontinue Yahoo 360°, including bug fixes; the company explained that in 2008 it would establish a "universal profile" similar to the experimental system of Yahoo Mash.
Public offering of Yahoo! shares
Circa 1996 Yahoo! enters what will be recognized by its founders as one of the most critical instances in the company's history. It was about the possibility of placing shares on the public market, known as NASDAQ, for the first time, in order to achieve three central objectives that would favor the consolidation of Yahoo! as a company that generates its own resources, outside of a model of net exploration in the new territory of the Internet.
In the first instance, the search engine business, in which Excite, Lycos and Infoseek already participated, began to show clear signs of a reconversion in this sense, so that on the date of analyzing the public market launch (IPO: Initial Public Offering), the experiences of these were already known and there was background that confirmed that the public listing of these companies had made them gain recognition -among users and investors- and that finally this diffusion and consolidation as "real" economic ventures ” had allowed them to increase user traffic and make important strategic alliances.
Derivatively, the entry of the sector into a new stage of greater competitiveness, required capital to finance the strategic areas that would guarantee differential advantages: better search engines, new products that would allow generating income beyond advertising and Sufficient capital to carry out marketing actions that build brand value to favor the identification of navigators with a particular search engine (in order to attract and retain users).
A second objective at the time of making the decision was to be able to obtain sufficient liquidity to make a qualitative leap in the relationship with a strategic partner that had already proven to be critical when it came to channeling the flow of Internet users: Netscape. In relation to this, already in 1995 an alliance had been made with Netscape (who held the undisputed first place as a network access application) so that the "Internet Directory" button will redirect to the Yahoo page. !.
However, already started the negotiations that sought to place Yahoo! as the default home page at Netscape, the company's management recognized that it lacked sufficient capital to close this deal.
Lastly, and since until that year Yahoo! It was not a company that generated profits, there was a need to be able to organize a new business model that would ensure long-term sustainability and that would allow entry barriers to other already consolidated technology companies (Microsoft, among others), which would not take long. to enter as competitors. For this, it was necessary to be able to hire new highly qualified executives, and the funds from the IPO should suffice in this regard.
However, while recognizing the benefits that opening the company to the public would bring, the need to shore up the image of Yahoo! prior to the IPO in order to outline a more attractive profile for investors and thus improve the initial placement of titles.
Under this premise, two previous rounds of private financing were carried out (instrumented as a direct sale of shares to other companies) that would alter and compromise the corporate structure of Yahoo!.
Under these conditions, in a first round of capitalization carried out in November 1995, Sequoia Capital, one of the oldest and most recognized consortiums in Silicon Valley (which had financed companies such as Oracle, Cisco and Apple) arranged a contribution for 1 million dollars that opened the way for him to get a 25% shareholding.
Of the remaining shares, a part that represented 5% was acquired by SoftBank of Japan as a non-controlling investment, while 2.5% by Yahoo! was bought by Reuters, with whom alliances had already been closed in October of the previous year to provide Yahoo! of content in exchange for using the portal as a platform for the news agency to enter the Internet.
The remaining shares (5% of Yahoo!'s capital) were bought by other organizations, which led to the opening of the controlling package of 63% of the shares held internally by Yahoo! and the inclusion of Sequoia Capital as a major player in the company's future decisions. By the end of 1995, the share capital of Yahoo! It was 40 million dollars.
After a preliminary phase of selecting potential sources of financing for the second round of capitalization in January 1996, Japan's Softbank turned out to be one of the most interested and solid players.
The alliance with Softbank, led by the visionary Masayoshi Son, considered the Japanese Bill Gates, would give Yahoo! not only enough funds to support an attractive and convenient price at the IPO, but would also provide the company with a vast network of contacts and alliances in the eastern market, allowing Yahoo! consolidate itself as the main Asian portal. It is all that allows them to enter the social networks that do not cause problems, however, Son's proposal turned out to be aggressive, since he conditioned his participation in the company to the pre-agreed sale of 30% of the capital of Yahoo!, with which, although it would not achieve absolute control of it, it would position it as a partner to necessarily consult when conducting the firm's business (in the framework of negotiations, and in order to maintain the control of Yahoo! by its founders and Sequoia, it was resolved that both Yang, Filo and Moritz – Sequoia's controlling manager – would involve part of their share capital in the IPO to each remain with 17% of the shareholding mass). In this way, Softbank provided liquidity for $63.75, which determined a new market value for Yahoo! of 212 million dollars.
So it was that on April 12, 1996 at the time the New York Stock Exchange opened and the 2.6 million shares of Yahoo! (representing 40% of the company), almost 2 million shares were automatically acquired by Softbank, while the remaining 10% was divided into smaller investors.
At the close of this first day on the NASDAQ, the share of Yahoo! which had been released at US$13 per unit, reached a value of US$33 (150% increase in a single date), bringing the market value to more than US$858 million.
It should be noted that the following day the value of the share fell by almost 50%, and that throughout the year it could not recover the record figure reached on the first day.
Regarding the shareholding, it was possible to observe how Softbank gradually withdrew from Yahoo! (after closing an alliance that would lead him to have 97% of the shares of Yahoo! Japan, which, associated with the broadband provider in that country, allowed Son to obtain new liquid funds to continue his expansion in other companies), so that by September 2001 its weight had dropped from the initial 35% in 1996 to a little less than 20%, and that in August 2002 it would fall again to around 9%.
This latest move by Softbank in relation to Yahoo! It must be taken into account in light of a resolution taken jointly by Yang, Filo and Sequoia Capital, which launched an Anti-Takeover Plan due to rumors of purchase intentions by Viacom, Disney and/or News Corporation. This provision, which enables the possibility for shareholders to execute a put option on their capital at a pre-fixed price of US$250 per unit, in the event that a shareholder obtains a number of papers that grant him more than 15% of the company's control.
Faced with this situation, Dale, Yang and Sequoia Capital restricted their participation, but beyond the fluctuations that it unleashed in the value of the company, they managed to fragment the ownership of the company in such a way that even today majority shareholders are not recognized –neither external nor internal– that even manage to concentrate 9% of the power over decision-making.
Yahoo! in Spanish
In Spanish Yahoo! has the Yahoo! in Spanish, Yahoo! Spain, Yahoo! Mexico and Yahoo! Argentina.
In Mexico, Yahoo! had its offices in Mexico City. The Mexico office structure provided local support to users, had its own sales, engineering and production force and carried out tasks related to special promotions, such as the "Best of the Web".
Yahoo! Mexico was founded in October 1999 under the direction of the then General Manager, Alejandro Cardoso Mendoza. The launch party was led by Roberto Alonso, president of Yahoo! Latin America. At the beginning of its foundation, it was a sponsor of the program "Gente con chispa", on TV Azteca, hosted by Alan Tacher.
The offices of Yahoo! In Mexico they were closed in 2016, along with the offices of Yahoo! in Argentina.
In Spain, Yahoo! It has offices in Madrid with its own resources. The office of Yahoo! in Spain also supports the efforts of Yahoo! in Catalan.
For the product Yahoo! in Spanish, Yahoo! has an office in Miami, which is also the head of Yahoo! Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. This office is known as Yahoo! Latin America. The legal representation for corporate business in Argentina is headed by the "Estudio Jurídico de Altas Tecnologías Delphi", which is also responsible for the "Founding Idea of Y!&# 3. 4; be an engine of change that allows the balanced and sustainable development of civilization and technology (Consciousness Technology).
Yahoo! Research Center Latin America
In January 2006, Yahoo! Inc. inaugurates a Yahoo Research Center in Santiago de Chile together with the laboratories of the Web Research Center (CIW) of the University of Chile. Basically, the search behavior and the optimization and management of large volumes of information will be studied. This research center was the first in Latin America and the only one outside the US. In October 2006 another Research Center was opened in Barcelona under Ricardo Baeza.
Yahoo! Research is the advanced research division of Yahoo! Inc., responsible for developing the world-class research and innovation that will inform the company's new technological inventions and next generation business.
Yahoo! Research has 8 Research Centers around the world and 100 researchers: Barcelona (Spain), Bangalore (India), Berkeley (CA, USA), Israel, Santiago (Chile), New York (USA), Silicon Valley (CA, USA) and Southern California (CA, USA).
Criticism
Yahoo!, PRISM and the Edward Snowden case
Yahoo! was designated, among other companies that develop cutting-edge computer technology products, as one of those involved in the PRISM top-secret electronic surveillance program, run by the United States National Security Agency (NSA), according to reports and documents leaked by former whistleblower and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee Edward Snowden in June 2013.
Sale to Verizon
On July 25, 2016, the purchase of Yahoo by Verizon was announced for 4.8 billion dollars. In early December of that same year, Verizon threatened to take the portal to court if they did not set a price that reflects the economic and public impact that security breaches may have.
Data leaks
Information associated with at least 500 million Yahoo! was stolen by hackers in late 2014. The data breach was revealed by Yahoo two years later, on September 22, 2016. The stolen material consists of names, email addresses, phone numbers, security questions, and your responses (encrypted or unencrypted), dates of birth, and encrypted passwords (mostly with bcrypt). In a statement, the company presumes that the attack could have been supported by a foreign government (without naming any specific one), and recommends that its users change the password and security questions, as well as those of other services where the same credentials are used..
In December 2016, the company reported that there was another data breach of 1 billion accounts in August 2013, apart from the one registered at the end of 2014. “The company has not been able to identify the intrusion associated with this robbery. Yahoo believes that this is a different incident from the one reported on September 22, 2016,” it said in the statement.
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