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CASE: HR-25A

DATE: 05/05/04

YAHOO! A NEW HR CHALLENGE (A)


Yahoo! said it will have to cut 12 percent of its 3,510-person global work force to lower its costs
during the current advertising slump.
The Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2001

It was a first for Yahoo!, so there was a lot of emotion. It was such rapid growth in three years,
and then it was gone.
Pranesh Anthapur, Vice President, Human Resources, Yahoo!

Purple and yellow adorned the walls and furniture in the company commissary where an
afternoon reception was being held for Libby Sartain, Yahoo!s new chief of people and SVP of
human resources. It was August 2001, her first month on the job, and Sartain was busy asking
people what was on their minds. What she heard was uncertainty as well as anxiety and fear.
Since the dot-com bubble burst, online advertising had slumped, Yahoo!s revenues had
suffered, the stock price had plummeted 86 percent, several top executives had resigned, and
management had announced the first-ever layoffs at the company in April of that year. (See
Exhibit 1 for a chart of Yahoo!s stock price.) New CEO Terry Semel, former co-CEO of
Warner Brothers, had arrived in May but had not yet provided his new plan for the company.

Given her career in HR, most recently as VP of people at Southwest Airlines, Sartain could
understand the growing pains. In her first HR job, she had been given the unpleasant task of
preparing the layoff packages for her company. When she later confided to her boss how terrible
it had been, he said, Its about to get even tougher. You have one more layoff package to
prepare for yourself.1

Looking at the people around her at Yahoo!, Sartain was characteristically optimistic. The
boards appointment of Semel, a well-respected veteran of traditional media businesses, signaled
a new direction for the company. Semel had also promised a long-term approach to running and
growing the company, which had attracted Sartain. Terry was so focused on bench strength.
He said, Were looking at businesses to buy, and we might not have anyone to run them. I need
someone to come in here and help me find great leaders who can make money.2

1
Libby Sartain and Martha I. Finney, HR from the Heart, AMACOM, 2003, p. 225.
2
Bill Breen, Shes Helping Yahoo Act Normal, Fast Company, May 2003, p. 94.

Charles Catalano prepared this case under the supervision of Professor Charles OReilly as the basis for class discussion rather
than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation.
Copyright 2004 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. To order copies or
request permission to reproduce materials, e-mail the Case Writing Office at: cwo@gsb.stanford.edu or write: Case Writing
Office, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 518 Memorial Way, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-5015. No part of
this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any
means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the permission of the Stanford Graduate
School of Business.
Yahoo! A New HR Challenge HR-25A p. 2

This is the most fantastic opportunity in the world,3 Sartain thought. But first, as the person
most directly responsible for the people at Yahoo!, she needed to understand the problems that
had developed over the turmoil of the last two years and what it would take to smooth out the
ride. Now theyre looking for some clarity in their careers. Theyre asking, Where do we go
from here?4 Sartain asked herself the same question, where should she and her HR organization
go from here?

Sartains Background
Sartain brought many years of experience and accomplishment in HR, which she considered
more of a calling than a career. Over her 13 years at Southwest Airlines, the last six and a half as
VP of people, Sartain played a significant role in establishing Southwests renown as a company
that achieved extraordinary success through the treatment of its people. Sartain joined Southwest
in 1988 as director of compensation and benefits, drawn by the importance the company placed
on its employees. Southwest was way ahead of its time in recognizing that its success was due
to the efforts of its people, said Sartain.5 Southwest doubled in size every 3 to 5 years during
Sartains tenure, growing from 6,500 employees when she started, to 32,000 employees during
her tenure as VP of people. Sartain had responsibility for overseeing 300 HR staff and serving
on the executive planning committee. She also dedicated herself to HR causes outside the office
and was a lifelong volunteer for the Society of Human Resource Management. Her interest in
recruiting had held a personal importance ever since college when she recruited a young man
named David to the student branch of that professional society. He eventually became her
husband.6

Sartains career had included HR work in a variety of industries including high-tech banking
services, cosmetics, and electronics manufacturing. Seeking a change after Southwest, she
turned away the advances of two airlines in deciding to join Yahoo!, which fit the key criteria
she had been seeking: a young but established company with great promise, strong brand, and a
changing leadership. The position had opened when the head of Yahoo! HR departed; the head
of compensation and benefits had also left at about the same time.

Company Background

Taking Flight
Yahoo! grew from humble beginnings in 1994 as a Web guide created by two Stanford electrical
engineering Ph.D. candidates Jerry Yang and David Filo as a way to avoid work on their
dissertations. We were playing on the Web, like everyone else was, and it just so happened that
David one day decided to come up with something that sort of kept track of his favorites and
what everyone elses favorites were, Yang recalled.7 Yang and Filo originally called the Web
directory Jerrys Guide to the World Wide Web, renaming it Yahoo! as early Web enthusiasts
began visiting the site in increasing numbers. (Yang, in the self-effacing manner characteristic
of both founders, did not feel right taking all the credit.) Filo claimed that the interest in their
3
Bill Breen, Shes Helping Yahoo Act Normal, Fast Company, May 2003, p. 94.
4
Bill Breen, Shes Helping Yahoo Act Normal, Fast Company, May 2003, p. 94.
5
Kristine Ellis, Libby Sartain, Vice President of People, Southwest Airlines, Training, January 2001.
6
Bill Leonard, Ready To Soar, HR Magazine, January 2001.
7
Yahoo! Dave and Jerrys Excellent Venture, (video program), The Stanford Channel, 1997.
Yahoo! A New HR Challenge HR-25A p. 3

site was unexpected. Surprising to us, people did start using it and a couple months into it after
we had first started to organize these things we probably had people from 40 different countries
that were using it, probably a couple thousand people a day.8 As Yang recalled, he and Filo had
had the opportunity to see the fledgling Web grow right before their eyes. Recalled Yang, It
was amazing, you sort of hear about things going through exponential growth; there we were in
our trailer watching it on our computers every day.9

Yahoo!s transformation from hobby to business began with the involvement of venture
capitalist Mike Moritz of Sequoia Capital who saw visitors to the Yahoo! Web site as potential
viewers of paid advertisements. Yang recalled, We really didnt know whether it was going to
fly or not because until that time the Internet had been very much against commercialism.10

Filo observed, As it turned out, it never really ended up being a big deal.11 Moritz was also
responsible for bringing in Tim TK Koogle, a 9-year veteran of Motorola, to run the company
in August 1995. From the very beginning, fit was recognized as a critical part of Yahoo!s
organizational priorities. Recalled Filo, When looking for a CEO our biggest concern was just
finding someone who would fit in, and understood what the Internet was all about12

Yahoo! started with a basic strategy that remained essentially unchanged from their early days
through the period of hyper-growth in the late 1990s.13 (See Exhibit 2 for Yahoo!s mission
statement.)

Product strategy: Yahoo! focused on user experience as opposed to raw performance


and total number of pages indexed. Yahoo! relied on manual indexing of the Web (done
by a team of workers known as surfers) and a selection of information services that
were provided to users for free. We really wanted to keep the service free that was a
fundamental goal, Yang proclaimed.14

Branding strategy: Yahoo! exhibited a very early preoccupation with marketing its
brand, launching a 1996 campaign with the Do You Yahoo!? tagline and spending
heavily on TV commercials to reach the mass market. Branding concerns predominated
business dealings including partnership activities even more than revenues.
According to Yang, Primarily, were brand. Were trying to promote the brand and
build the product so that it has reliability, pizzazz, and credibility.15

Service platform strategy: A variety of services shared the Yahoo! brand although the
functionality was sometimes obtained through partnerships, internal development and
acquisitions.

8
Yahoo! Dave and Jerrys Excellent Venture, (video program), The Stanford Channel, 1997. Ibid.
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
13
Gateways to the Internet: America Online and Yahoo! Stanford GSB Case, #EC-24, December, 2000.
14
John Cassidy, Dot.conThe Greatest Story Ever Sold, HarperCollins, 2002, p. 91.
15
Karen Angel, Inside Yahoo, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002, pp. 43-44.
Yahoo! A New HR Challenge HR-25A p. 4

Independence: Yahoo! prided itself on being open and independent, reflecting the
founding principles of the Web. Yahoo!s independence drew increasing attention during
the high profile mergers in 1998 and 1999 involving Excite and AtHome cable, AOL and
Netscape, and Disney and InfoSeek.

Organizational Structure
From the beginning, early backers and the leadership team saw Yahoo! as a media company
rather than merely a Web search directory. People naturally spoke about Yahoo!s product as
consisting of properties, such as Travel or E-mail, developed by producers. Property
development or production was one of three main groups into which the company was divided,
along with marketing and sales and international. Property development consisted of the
production, engineering, and surfing functions. Producers were responsible for Yahoo!s
properties and services. In the early days, the producer and the developer who did the actual
coding were often one and the same. The product specification might come from the company
founders or the developers themselves. Experimentation was highly encouraged and products
were often given an initial soft launch (i.e. made available to a limited audience) which
allowed user feedback to be obtained either to improve the product or, in some cases, to scrap it
entirely. Over time, Yahoo! products and services were broadly categorized within property
development. (See Exhibit 3 for an overview of Yahoo! products and services.) By the time of
Sartains arrival, Yahoo! had grown into a total of 44 distinct business groups and sub-groups.

A technology group, consisting primarily of engineers, spanned the entire organization. A


network services team was specifically responsible for the suite of products that supported or
were integrated into the other product areas. In keeping with the strong cultural identity held by
engineering, the engineers remained a separate group, and were leased out to the different
product areas. Members of the surfing department combed through new Web sites and updated
the directories in Yahoo! Search. Surfers not only classified new sites, but they also alerted
producers when they spotted a relevant site. New automated search technologies played an
increasingly important role in Yahoo!s search solution. Marketing and sales encompassed three
functions: corporate marketing, sales, and business development. The corporate marketing staff
was responsible for developing the Yahoo! brand name among the Web-surfing and general
public. Many of Yahoo!s corporate marketers came not from Internet-related backgrounds, but
from traditional consumer packaged-goods companies, such as Procter and Gamble. Sales
people, both internal and external, sold the advertising inventory on Yahoo!s 1 billion plus
page-views per day. Business development led Yahoo!s partnership and acquisition activities.
The international group included the increasing number of offices outside the U.S., the first
being Yahoo! Japan, launched in April 1996. From Yahoo!s earliest days, the company relied
heavily on internal social networks, and formal mechanisms linking functions remained rare.16

Yahoo! grew from 25 employees at its IPO in 1996 to 3,510 in spring of 2001. The developing
organization reflected the personalities and values of founders Yang and Filo. The leadership
team consisted of people trusted by the founders who bonded during the start-up phase or, in
some cases, even earlier. Srinija Srinivasan, Yahoo! employee #3, was an extremely bright
Stanford alumna whom Yang and Filo got to know during their graduate school experience.

16
Yahoo: Business on Internet Time, Harvard Business School Case, July 10, 1999. [Ed. note: Entire paragraph derived from
HBS case text.]
Yahoo! A New HR Challenge HR-25A p. 5

Srinivasan had come aboard to organize and manage the surfers, and remained one of the
companys most highly regarded managers.

Yahoo! Culture
Yahoo! had always been considered a fun place to work, a place where people didnt take
themselves too seriously. Yahoo!s founders expressed their irreverent attitude in the meaning
they attributed to the company name Yet Another Highly Officious Oracle. (One of the first
CEO candidates reportedly had vowed to change the company name and predictably did not get
the job.) Yahoo! maintained a collaborative environment in which the quality of the idea
mattered more than the position or title of the source. Hierarchical job titles had traditionally
been frowned upon, most notably within the engineering group where business cards said simply
engineer, regardless of seniority. More conventional job titles were common elsewhere in the
company as a result of growth and the desire to simplify relations with business partners.

Entrepreneurial, innovative behavior was the norm. As Ken Perluss, long-time technical
recruiter at Yahoo! and veteran of Silicon Graphics described it, Wed try anything, and if you
had a great idea and it seemed like it might be cool, try it.17 Hard work, a fast pace, and long
hours persisted at Yahoo!, in keeping with the habits established by Yang and Filo in their trailer
days at Stanford. Didnt matter if it was 2 p.m. or 2 a.m., you just kind of knew that they were
going to be there. You just stopped being surprised by it, recalled Srinivasan.18 At Yahoo!,
tales of employees sleeping under their cubes after an all-nighter on the job were not
uncommon. Filo himself was known for 24-plus hour marathon coding sessions, despite being in
the position of not having to work another day in his life if he chose. I never worked as hard in
my life as I did for four years at Yahoo!, summed up one employee.19 The colors purple and
yellow were also part of the Yahoo! culture and, consistent with the rest of the culture, were hard
to miss once you walked in the building.

The Dot-Com Boom Yahoo! Soars


Yahoo!s fast growth during the dot-com boom in the late 1990s had impacted the development
of its HR practices. The pace of business had left minimal time to establish the systems and
processes suitable for a larger, more complex organization. At its peak, on Jan. 3, 2000, the
companys market cap was $128 billion, more than twice that of media giant Walt Disney Co.20
The company as a whole was growing in leaps and bounds.21

Up until the layoff my marching orders here were, Keep hiring until we tell you to stop,
recalled recruiter Perluss.22 Training and leadership skills were largely developed on-the-job.
Yahoo! built capabilities through acquisitions, a total of four in 1998 and five in 1999, which
presented their own HR complications. Yahoo!s strong culture, so pervasive in the day-to-day
activities of the company, created extra challenges in the integration process. While the

17
Interview with Ken Perluss, May 5, 2003.
18
Yahoo! Dave and Jerrys Excellent Venture, (video program), Stanford Communications, [1998]
19
Karen Angel, (Inside Yahoo, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002,) op.cit. p. 86.
20
Ben Elgin, Linda Himelstein, Ronald Grover, Heather Green, Inside Yahoo! The untold story of how arrogance,
infighting, and management missteps derailed one of the hottest companies on the Web, Business Week, May 21,
2001.
21
Interview with Pranesh Anthapur, May 5, 2003.
22
Interview with Ken Perluss, May 5, 2003.
Yahoo! A New HR Challenge HR-25A p. 6

departure of top executives was common in any acquisition, there was a sense on Wall Street that
Yahoo! missed an opportunity to build and develop its management team for the long term.
Their culture helped them build a superb site and really edgy brand, but it also held them back
from making forward-looking business decisions, noted Holly Becker, an analyst at Lehman
Brothers.23 In 1999, the number of Yahoo! employees reached 1,992 from just 386 two years
earlier. According to Pranesh Anthapur, a manager in HR at the time, the problem was How do
we hire fast enough for the company?24

Emergency Landing
The uncertainty and anxiety evident to Sartain in her first interactions with employees stemmed
from the dramatic turn of events in 2000 and 2001. As analyst and investor confidence in the
high tech industry began to erode, profitless dot-coms lost the marketing and advertising dollars
they had been so lavishly spending, many of them with Yahoo!. According to one Yahoo!
manager, four basic problems converged: new management was needed, as the team was leaving
or living in fear; revenues dropped significantly; the stock price fell drastically; and constant
rumors circulated about whether Yahoo! would remain independent or not. By February 2001,
the Yahoo! board decided to ask CEO Tim Koogle to step down, and by April Semel was
announced as the new CEO and president of Yahoo!, effective May 1. The same day as the
Semel announcement, Yahoo! disclosed a workforce reduction of 12 percent. Founders Yang
and Filo used the announcement to employees to acknowledge the collective feelings of the
company. Becky Ribeiro, a Yahoo! recruiting manager in HR, recalled, They actually did an
internal broadcast first. Then they addressed the company at an all-hands meeting They did
their best to explain what was going on, and even apologized to the employees about what was
going on. They were both pretty beaten up about it.25

Human Resources at Yahoo!

When Sartain joined Yahoo! in August 2001, the HR group consisted of about 50 people
covering the primary functions of compensation and benefits, recruiting and staffing, and general
administration. Yahoo!s director of compensation and benefits had departed previously and the
position remained unfilled.

HR Strategy
Sartains initial conversations with employees made it clear that HR lacked a common vision or
strategy in its approach to staffing and development. During the boom, the mandate was simply
to hire people. Formal practices were underutilized in several functional areas within HR, and
standard metrics did not exist.

Hiring
Following the frenzy surrounding high tech firms during the dot-com boom, Yahoo! lacked a
distinctive recruiting strategy or goals for talent acquisition that were adequately communicated
and shared. In the eyes of some managers, recruiting consisted of simply posting jobs and
circulating resumes.
23
Mylene Mangalindan and Suein L. Hwang, Gang of Six: Coterie of Early Hires Made Yahoo! a Hit But an Insular Place, The
Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2001.
24
Interview with Pranesh Anthapur, May 5, 2003.
25
Interview with Rebecca Ribeiro, May 5, 2003.
Yahoo! A New HR Challenge HR-25A p. 7

In general, the Yahoo! hiring process was not perceived as rigorous, systematic or objective.
Standards were inconsistent across the company and not correlated to achievement or
performance demands. Interviews, conducted according to the particular habits of the
interviewer involved, were the primary screening mechanism.

Yahoo! relied heavily on attracting employees with a natural passion for what the company did
and an emotional interest in being part of the team. Few things provided a greater psychic payoff
for an engineer than creating something in code one day and then having it available to literally
millions the next day, noted one Yahoo! recruiter. Yahoo! took advantage of its Web pages to
recruit people with a demonstrated interest in the service and specific subject areas. For
instance, technical recruiting posted job solicitation links on the pages of product areas where
openings existed for engineering talent. This successfully attracted candidates not only familiar
with Yahoo!, but with a personal interest in the product category, say Sports or Finance.

While the Yahoo! brand was strong, talent at the company was not viewed, either internally or
externally, as a contributing factor to the brand strength. The caliber of Yahoo! employees was
not a distinguishing characteristic of the company, despite the actual high quality of the
workforce.

Job Design
HR had instituted job levels for the first time in 2001 with the assistance of an outside consulting
firm. Prior to that, each job had been handled on a case-by-case basis. In general, managers
were not very familiar with how to use the job classification system and saw it as a bit
constraining, particularly within the Yahoo! culture where structure was typically perceived as a
roadblock to getting things done. While some recruiters maintained better relationships than
others, communication between hiring managers and recruiting teams was minimal, and internal
customer satisfaction was low. In general, employees claimed they did not know the HR staff
well enough. Recruiters were functionally organized, isolating them from business units.

Most sourcing was reactive with little use of outside market intelligence. Managers often
subjected recruiters to I need it now demands. Job posting and referrals that occurred after the
need arose accounted for 54 percent of hires. In some cases, managers went to staffing as a last
resort. Managers perceived that staff were overwhelmed by administrative tasks which kept
them from concentrating on the value-added aspects of their jobs, such as scouting. Workforce
planning received little or no formal attention, and no process existed for anticipating talent
needs in light of business targets or strategy. Succession planning did not exist. Yahoo! HR
presently did not have competency models or assessment and profiling tools, and there was no
central database of skills and competencies in the workforce. Decisions to hire versus develop
had traditionally defaulted to hiring, without regard to any formal guidelines.

Yahoo!s on-boarding process consisted of a one-day orientation that familiarized new


employees with the company culture. It focused on administrative details without addressing
how Yahoo!s businesses operated and made money. Some managers considered the process
non-essential and, in some cases, encouraged their employees to skip it.
Yahoo! A New HR Challenge HR-25A p. 8

Retention
The average length of service at Yahoo! was 2.2 years. Yahoo! employees were used to
receiving a promotion on average every 7 months.

Training and Development


At the time that Sartain arrived, there was no established learning and development function
within Yahoo! HR. Management training was described as minimalistic, although some basic
training programs were offered on topics such as project management. Training for the most part
occurred on the job. As found at other Internet firms during the dot-com boom, many of
Yahoo!s employees had risen to new responsibilities surpassing their level of experience due to
the companys rapid growth. Most managers had limited experience or training in developing
subordinates, and the pace of the work did not encourage coaching.

Given other pressing priorities during the dot-com boom, talent management had been neglected.
For the most part, Yahoo! employees were expected to work hard, and be resourceful and
creative. In return they had fun, a sense of ownership in what they did, and highly visible
evidence of their work in the world. However, by the time Sartain arrived, the expectation of
sudden riches had disappeared. The opportunity at this point, as Sartain saw it, was to take pride
in the fact that Yahoo! as a company was one of the survivors.

Compensation and Benefits


Compensation in terms of base salary was generally below average for the market. This was
deliberate and meant to be offset by stock options, which were offered to all full-time employees
who received a chart with stock and vesting information illustrating how much the options would
be worth. While attractive during the boom period, a large number of outstanding options were
presently under water, many priced at around $190. Management had issued more options to
existing employees in an attempt to redress a perceived case of the haves and the have-nots,
caused by the radical volatility of the stock price over the last two years. From January 1, 2000
to June 30, 2001, the stock price had ranged from $237.50 to $11.38.

Until 2001, incentive pay had not existed, partly owing to Yahoo!s egalitarian culture.
Founders Yang and Filo had never taken cash bonuses and continued to receive salaries
drastically below market level. Vice presidents traditionally had no pay at risk. While sales had
introduced team-based incentives, management incentives elsewhere encountered difficulty in
practice as revenue goals often lacked a salient link to individual objectives. The programs
needed greater communication support. People received incentive pay without formal
notification explaining how much and why they had been paid.

All employees, including their families, received free benefits with the exception of some
elective medical benefits. This practice resulted from the technical limitations of the early
payroll system, which was ill-equipped to handle the deductions. In addition, leaders such as
Yang felt it was justified in light of Yahoo!s low base salaries. The high proportion of single
employees (about two-thirds) and the relatively young average age of the Yahoo! workforce (33)
helped make the present approach sustainable.
Yahoo! A New HR Challenge HR-25A p. 9

Some of Yahoo!s benefits reflected its unique culture. Foosball tables were a standard at every
site. Headquarters also offered a free coffee bar, and each location had one or more
conveniences, such as haircuts, car washes, showers and workout facilities, dry cleaning, even
dental cleaning, made available on-site. You could live here, joked one employee.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Sartain was optimistic about what her HR group could accomplish, and about the good work that
the current employees were accomplishing. But she still had a lot of thinking to do about where
Yahoo! HR needed to go. Clearly a great deal would depend upon the strategic changes
expected from Semel. While there had not yet been any formal declaration from Semel, it was
readily apparent that Yahoo! had fallen victim to an over-reliance on advertising for its revenues,
and would need to diversify. Indications were that Semel believed the business model needed to
shift to selling more offerings for which Yahoo! could charge a fee, or preferably a subscription,
such as financial information or premium video or audio content. This not only played to
Semels expertise in traditional media development, but also promised to take advantage of
Yahoo!s considerable user base (which in fact continued to grow, albeit more slowly, during the
economic slump) and, most importantly, the Yahoo! brand.

In light of these expected changes, what would be Sartains priorities? Would she be able to
duplicate her successes at Southwest? While Sartain oversaw tremendous growth at Southwest,
its business never required the type of strategic changes facing Yahoo!. Furthermore, Sartain
saw internal branding as a key HR strategy, the special sauce as she referred to it. And at
Southwest, Sartain had successfully linked the external brand associated with freedom to a
powerful message used internally with employees: At Southwest Freedom Begins with Me.
Would it be possible to leverage Yahoo!s brand in her HR approach? Indeed, given HRs
traditionally low profile at Yahoo!, how prominent a role could Sartains group expect to take in
Yahoo!s turnaround? Where would Sartain need to focus her attention to create the greatest
long-term impact within Yahoo! HR and across the entire Yahoo! enterprise?
Yahoo! A New HR Challenge HR-25A p. 10

Exhibit 1
Chart of Yahoo!s Stock Price

Y AHOO - P RICE AND V OLUME 23/4/04


250 250

200 200

150 150

100 100

50 50

0 0
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
MNS. MNS.
600 600

400 400

200 200

0 0
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001

Source: DAT AST REAM

Source: Thompson Financial Datastream


Yahoo! A New HR Challenge HR-25A p. 11

Exhibit 2
Yahoo!s Mission Statement

To be the most essential global Internet service for consumers and businesses.

Source: Company Documents


Yahoo! A New HR Challenge HR-25A p. 12

Exhibit 3
Overview of Yahoo! Products and Services

Content and navigation, within the hierarchically categorized listings such as News, Sports, etc.
Communication and community: Yahoo! Mail, Messenger, Greetings, etc. Yahoo! Clubs,
Personals, Photos, etc.
Personalization: My Yahoo!, Calendar, Address Book, etc.
Commerce: Yahoo! Shopping, Store, Auctions, etc. Yahoo! Wallet, Bill Pay
Business and enterprise services: Corporate Yahoo!
Multi-channel, multimedia: rich media offerings, Yahoo! FinanceVision; wireless & phone
device delivery of Yahoo! Messenger
Wireless: Online Anywhere acquisition
Global reach: international businesses

Source: Gateways to the Internet: America Online and Yahoo! Stanford GSB Case, #EC-24, December,
2000.

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