Professional Documents
Culture Documents
2 Growth (19971999)
5 Yahoo! (20062008)
o
7.3 Reorganization
9 References
10 External links
David Filo
Jerry Yang
While the yahoo.com domain was created in January 1995,[3] by the end of 1994 Yahoo! had already
received one million hits. Yang and Filo realized their website had massive business potential, and
on March 2, 1995, Yahoo! wasincorporated.[11] On April 5, 1995, Michael Moritz of Sequoia
Capital provided Yahoo! with two rounds of venture capital, raising approximately $3 million. [12][13] On
April 12, 1996, Yahoo! had its initial public offering, raising $33.8 million by selling 2.6 million shares
at the opening bid of $13 each.
The word "Yahoo" had previously been trademarked for barbecue sauce, knives (by EBSCO
Industries) and human propelled watercraft (by Old Town Canoe Co.). Therefore, in order to get
control of the trademark, Yang and Filo added the exclamation mark to the name. [14] However, the
exclamation mark is often incorrectly omitted when referring to Yahoo!.
Srinija Srinivasan, an alumna of Stanford University, was hired as Yahoo!'s fifth employee as
"Ontological Yahoo!" to assist Yang and Filo with organizing the content on the internet. [15][16]
Growth (19971999)[edit]
In the late 1990s, Yahoo!, MSN, Lycos, Excite and other web portals were growing rapidly. Web
portal providers rushed to acquire companies to expand their range of services, generally with the
goal of increasing the time each user stays within the portal.
On March 8, 1997, Yahoo! acquired online communications company Four11. Four11's webmail
service, Rocketmail, became Yahoo! Mail. Yahoo! also acquired ClassicGames.com and turned it
into Yahoo! Games. Yahoo! then acquired direct marketing companyYoyodyne Entertainment, Inc.
on October 12, 1998.[17] In January 1999, Yahoo! acquired web hosting provider GeoCities. Another
company Yahoo! took over was eGroups, which became Yahoo! Groups in June 2000. On March 8,
1998, Yahoo! launched Yahoo! Pager,[18] an instant messaging service that was renamed Yahoo!
Messenger a year later.
When acquiring companies, Yahoo! often changed the relevant terms of service. For example, they
claimed intellectual property rights for content on their servers, unlike the previous policies of the
companies they acquired. As a result, many of the acquisitions were controversial and unpopular
with users of the existing services.[citation needed]
In March 2004, Yahoo! launched a paid inclusion program whereby commercial websites were
guaranteed listings on the Yahoo! search engine after payment. [35] This scheme was lucrative, but
proved unpopular both with website marketers (who were reluctant to pay), and the public (who were
unhappy about the paid-for listings being indistinguishable from other search results). [36] As of
October 2006, Paid Inclusion ceased to guarantee any commercial listing and only helped the paid
inclusion customers, by crawling their site more often and by providing some statistics on the
searches that led to the page and some additional smart links (provided by customers as feeds)
below the actual url.
In 2004, in response to Google's release of Gmail, Yahoo! upgraded the storage of all free Yahoo!
Mail accounts from 4 MB to 1 GB, and all Yahoo! Mail Plus accounts to 2 GB. On July 9, 2004,
Yahoo! acquired e-mail provider Oddpost to add an Ajax interface to Yahoo! Mail Beta.[37] Google also
released Google Talk, a voice over IP and instant messaging service, on August 24, 2005. On
October 13, 2005, Yahoo! and Microsoft announced that Yahoo! Messenger and MSN
Messenger would become interoperable. In 2007, Yahoo! took out the storage meters, thus allowing
users unlimited storage.[38]
Yahoo! continued acquiring companies to expand its range of services, particularly Web
2.0 services. Yahoo! Launch became Yahoo! Music in February 2005. On March 20, 2005, Yahoo!
purchased photo sharing service Flickr.[39] That same month, the company launched its blogging and
social networking service Yahoo! 360. In June 2005, Yahoo! acquired blo.gs, a service based on
RSS feed aggregation. Yahoo! then bought online social event calendar Upcoming.org, in October
2005. Yahoo! acquired social bookmark site del.icio.us in December 2005 and then playlist sharing
community webjay in January 2009.
Yahoo! (20062008)[edit]
Yahoo! Next is an incubation ground for future Yahoo! technologies currently in their beta testing
phase, similar to Google Labs. It contains forums for Yahoo! users to give feedback to assist in the
development of these future Yahoo! technologies.
In early 2006, Yahoo! offered users the chance to beta test a new version of the Yahoo! homepage.
However, it currently only supports Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Users of other browsers,
such as Opera, have criticized Yahoo! for this move. Yahoo! says they intend to support additional
browsers in the future.
On August 27, 2007, Yahoo! released a new version of Yahoo! Mail. It added Yahoo! Messenger
integration (which included Windows Live Messenger due to the networks'federation) and free text
messages (not necessarily free to the receiver) to mobile phones in the U.S., Canada, India, and
the Philippines.[40]
On January 29, 2008, Yahoo! announced that the company was laying off 1,000 employees, as the
company had suffered severely in its inability to effectively compete with industry search
leader Google. The cuts represented 7 percent of the company's workforce of 14,300.[41]
In February 2008, Yahoo! acquired Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Maven Networks, a supplier of
internet video players and video advertising tools, for approximately $160 million.
Yahoo! announced on November 17, 2008, that Yang would be stepping down as CEO. [42]
On December 10, 2008, Yahoo! began laying off 1,520 employees around the world as the company
managed its way through the global economic downturn [43]
longer interested in a purchase of the entire company at the price offered earlier $33 per share.
Also, on June 12, Yahoo! announced a non-exclusive search advertising alliance with Google.
[62]
Upon this announcement, many executives and senior employees announced their plans to leave
the company as it appeared they had lost confidence in Yahoo!'s strategies. According to market
analysts, these pending departures impacted Wall Street's perception of the company.[63]
On July 7, 2008, Microsoft said it would reconsider proposing another bid for Yahoo! if the
company's nine directors were ousted at the annual meeting scheduled to be held on August 1,
2008. Microsoft believed it would be able to better negotiate with a new board. [64]
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, calling the current board irrational in its approach to talks with
Microsoft, launched a proxy fight to replace Yahoo!'s board. On July 21, 2008, Yahoo! settled with
Carl Icahn, agreeing to appoint him and two allies to an expanded board.
On November 20, 2008, almost 10 months after Microsoft's initial offer of $33 per share, Yahoo!'s
stock (YHOO) dropped to a 52-week low, trading at only $8.94 per share. [65]
On November 30, 2008, Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo!'s search business for $20 billion. [66]
On July 29, 2009, it was announced in a 10-year deal that Microsoft would have full access to
Yahoo!'s search engine to be used in future Microsoft projects for its search engine,Bing.[67] Under
the deal, Microsoft was not required to pay any cash up front to Yahoo!. The day after the deal was
announced, Yahoo!'s share price declined more than 10% to $15.14 per share, about 60% lower
than Microsoft's takeover bid a year earlier.
Employee layoffs[edit]
In early 2012, after the appointment of Scott Thompson as the new CEO, many rumors spread about
large layoffs looming. Kara Swisher who covers Yahoo at All Things Digitalreported that Yahoos
Chief Product Officer Blake Irving Resigned,[76] Andrei Broder, who was VP of computational
advertising and chief scientist of the Advertising Product Group, as well as Jianchang (JC) Mao, who
headed advertising sciences left the company. This followed the departures of Yahoo!
Labs head Prabhakar Raghavan who left forGoogle, and Raghu Ramakrishnan, who went
to Microsoft.[77]
On April 4, 2012, Yahoo announced a cut of 2,000 jobs or about 14 percent of 14,100 workers
employed by Yahoo. Yahoo! said it will save around $375 million annually after the layoffs are
completed at end of 2012.[78]
Reorganization[edit]
In an email memo sent to employees in April 2012, Scott Thomson re-iterated his view that
customers should come first at Yahoo. He defined customers as both users and advertisers. He also
completely re-organized the company. The reorganization took effect on May 1, 2012 and included
operations in three major groups for Yahoo! Consumer, Regions and Technology.
The Consumer group has three groups: Media, Connections, and Commerce. The customers of this
group are the users of Yahoo!.
The Regions group operates three regions: Americas, APAC, and EMEA. The customers of this
group are the advertisers of Yahoo!.
The Technology group includes Core Platforms, and Central Technology. It provides technology and
support to the other two major groups.
The Corporate group (Finance, Legal, and HR) remains unchanged and continues to support the
new groups.[85][86][87][88][89][90]
On July 16, 2012, former Google executive and Walmart corporate director Marissa Mayer was
named as Yahoo! CEO and President, and youngest CEO of a Fortune 500company.[98]
On May 19, 2013, the Wall Street Journal reported that Yahoo's board had approved an all-cash deal
to purchase the six-year-old blogging website Tumblr. 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 social-networking and
communications hub." Yahoo will pay US$1.1 billion for Tumblr, and the company's CEO and
founder David Karp will remain a large shareholder.[99]
The revamp of the Yahoo-owned photography service Flickr was launched in Times Square, New
York, U.S. on May 20, 2013 in an event that was attended by the city's mayor and a large
contingency of journalists. Eleven billboards in Times Square advertised the website's new tagline
biggr, spectaculr, wherevr. as part of the launch and Yahoo stated that it will provide Flickr users
with a free terabyte of storage. The official announcement of the Tumblr acquisition was also
included in the May 20 event.[100]
The media reported on Yahoo!'s interest in the video streaming site Hulu on May 26, 2013. Under
Mayer's leadership, Yahoo!'s bid is worth between US$600 and $800 million, as a variety of options
that consist of different circumstances were put forward by the company.[101] As of May 28, 2013,
Yahoo!'s videos attract 45 million unique visitors a month, while Hulu has 24 million visitorsthe
combination of the two audiences can place Yahoo! in the second-most popular position after
Google and its subsidiary YouTube.[102]
On August 2, 2013 Yahoo Inc announced the acquisition of social web browser concern RockMelt.
With the acquisition, 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 apps and existing web services will go
off from August 31.[103]
On August 7, 2013, at around midnight EDT, Yahoo! announced that it will be introducing the final
version of the new logo on 5 September 2013 at 4:00 a.m. UTC. To mark the occasion, the company
launched a "30 days of change" campaign that involved releasing a variation of the logo on each of
the 30 days leading up to the revelation date.[104][105]
Data collated by comScore during July 2013 revealed that more people in the U.S. visited Yahoo!
websites during the month in comparison to Google websitesthe occasion was the first time that
Yahoo! outperformed Google since 2011. The data did not incorporate visit statistics for the Yahoo!owned Tumblr website or mobile phone usage.[106]
On February 11, 2014, Yahoo! has acquired a social diary company named Wander.[107]
On February 13, 2014, Yahoo! acquired Distill, a technical recruiting company.[108]