Yahoo!
History
Yahoo! was founded in January 1994 by Stanford students Jerry Yang and David Filo. The original name of the company was "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web," but it was soon changed to Yahoo!, an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle." The yahoo.com domain was created on January 18, 1995.
The company grew rapidly throughout the 1990s and diversified into a web portal, followed by numerous high-profile acquisitions. The company's stock price skyrocketed during the dot-com boom, closing at an all-time high of $118.75 per 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.
Services
Yahoo! provides a wide range of services, including a search engine, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, advertising, online mapping, video sharing, and fantasy sports. The company's most significant service is perhaps Yahoo! Mail, which was launched on October 8, 1997. Over the years, Yahoo! Mail has undergone significant changes, with the most recent major update occurring in December 2020.
Acquisitions and changes
Over the years, Yahoo! has made many high-profile acquisitions. The company's largest acquisition is the purchase of Broadcast.com for $5.7 billion in 1999. Another significant acquisition was the purchase of Tumblr in 2013 for $1.1 billion, which was later sold for less than $3 million in 2019.
In 2016, Yahoo! confirmed a massive data breach, affecting hundreds of millions of users, making it one of the biggest data breaches in history. In 2017, it was revealed that all 3 billion Yahoo! user accounts were affected by the 2013 theft. This data breach had a significant impact on Yahoo!'s business and its sale to Verizon.
Sale to Verizon
In July 2016, Verizon Communications announced that it had agreed to purchase Yahoo!'s core internet business for $4.83 billion. The deal officially closed on June 13, 2017. After the sale, Yahoo! was renamed Altaba, with the remaining parts of the company continuing as an investment company.
Legacy
Yahoo! has had a significant impact on the internet and the broader technology industry. The company was one of the pioneers of the early internet era in the 1990s. It was also among the most popular sites in the United States, and its services have been used by billions of people worldwide.