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Yahoo!: Type Traded As

Yahoo! Inc. is an American internet company founded in 1994 and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. It operates a web portal that provides news, email, search, and other services to over 700 million monthly users worldwide. Yahoo! generates revenue primarily through advertising but also through commerce and small business services. The company struggled in the late 2000s but has since made efforts to reinvent itself, including rejecting a $44.6 billion acquisition offer from Microsoft in 2008 and appointing new CEO Marissa Mayer in 2012.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
111 views15 pages

Yahoo!: Type Traded As

Yahoo! Inc. is an American internet company founded in 1994 and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. It operates a web portal that provides news, email, search, and other services to over 700 million monthly users worldwide. Yahoo! generates revenue primarily through advertising but also through commerce and small business services. The company struggled in the late 2000s but has since made efforts to reinvent itself, including rejecting a $44.6 billion acquisition offer from Microsoft in 2008 and appointing new CEO Marissa Mayer in 2012.

Uploaded by

atozdhiyanes
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc.

Type Public

Traded as NASDAQ: YHOO
NASDAQ-100 Component
S&P 500 Component

Industry Internet

Founded March 1, 1995

Founder(s) Jerry Yang, David Filo

Headquarters Sunnyvale, California, U.S.

Area served Worldwide

Key people Fred Amoroso


(Chairman)
Marissa Mayer
(CEO)

Products See Yahoo! products

Revenue  US$ 4.98 billion (2011)[1]


Operating income  US$ 800 million (2011)[1]

Net income  US$ 1.04 billion (2011)[1]

Total assets  US$ 14.78 billion (2011)[1]

Total equity  US$ 12.53 billion (2011)[1]

Employees 12,000 (May 2012)[2]

Subsidiaries Yahoo! subsidiaries

Website Yahoo.com

Yahoo! headquarters
Yahoo! India Bangalore office
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United
States. The company is best known for its web portal, search engine (Yahoo! Search) and for a variety of other
services, including Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo!
Answers, advertising, online mapping, video sharing, fantasy sports and its social media website. It is one of
the most popular sites in the United States.[3] According to news sources, roughly 700 million people visit
Yahoo! websites every month.[4][5] Yahoo itself claims it attracts "more than half a billion consumers every
month in more than 30 languages."[6]

Yahoo! Inc. was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994 and was incorporated on March 1,
1995. On July 16, 2012, former Googleexecutive, Marissa Mayer, was named as Yahoo CEO and President,
effective July 17.[7] Yahoo has averaged one CEO a year for the last five years as it struggles to reinvent itself
for the next era of the Internet.

Contents
  [hide] 

1 History and growth

2 Products and services

o 2.1 Storing personal information and tracking usage

o 2.2 Communication

o 2.3 Content

o 2.4 Co-branded Internet services

o 2.5 Mobile Services

o 2.6 Commerce

o 2.7 Small business

o 2.8 Advertising

o 2.9 Yahoo! Next

o 2.10 Yahoo! BOSS

o 2.11 Yahoo! Meme

o 2.12 Y!Connect

o 2.13 Yahoo! Accessibility

o 2.14 Yahoo! Axis

o 2.15 Yahoo! SearchMonkey
o 2.16 Closed down services

 2.16.1 Twitter slide leak on upcoming changes to

Yahoo

3 Revenue model

4 Criticism

5 Yahoo subject of cyber attacks originating in China

6 Financial data

o 6.1 Advertising revenue

7 Executives

o 7.1 Board of Directors (current)

o 7.2 Board of Directors (past)

o 7.3 Chief Executive Officers

8 Yahoo! International

9 Logos and themes

10 See also

11 Notes and references

12 External links

History and growth


Main article:  History of Yahoo!

See also:  Timeline of Yahoo!

Dead external links may exist in this section. You can help by finding suitable


replacements. (May 2012)
Jerry Yang and David Filo, the founders of Yahoo.
In January 1994, Yang and Filo were electrical engineering graduate students at Stanford
University when they created a website named "Jerry's guide to the world wide web". [8] David and Jerry's
Guide to the World Wide Web was a directory of other websites, organized in a hierarchy, as opposed to
a searchable index of pages. In March 1994, "David and Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" was
renamed "Yahoo!"[9][10] The "yahoo.com" domain was created on January 18, 1995. [11]

The word "yahoo" is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle " 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.[13] 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." Filo's college girlfriend often referred to Filo as a "yahoo." This meaning
derives from the name of a race of fictional beings from Gulliver's Travels.

Yahoo grew rapidly throughout the 1990s. Like many search engines and web directories, Yahoo added
a web portal. It also made many high-profile acquisitions. Its stock price skyrocketed during the dot-com
bubble, Yahoo stocks closing at an all-time high of $118.75 a share on January 3, 2000. However, after
the dot-com bubble burst, it reached a post-bubble low of $4.05 on September 26, 2001.

In 2000, Yahoo began using Google for search. Over the next four years, it developed its own search
technologies, which it began using in 2004. Yahoo revamped its mail service to compete with
Google's Gmail in 2007. The company struggled through 2008, with several large layoffs.

In February 2008, Microsoft Corporation made an unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo for USD $44.6 billion.
Yahoo formally rejected the bid, claiming that it "substantially undervalues" the company and was not in
the interest of its shareholders. Three years later, Yahoo had a market capitalization of USD $22.24
billion.[14] Carol Bartz replaced Yang as CEO in January 2009.[15] In September 2011, she was removed
from her position at Yahoo by the company's chairman Roy Bostock, and CFO Tim Morse was named as
Interim CEO of the company.

In early 2012, after the appointment of Scott Thompson as CEO, rumors spread about looming layoffs.
Several key executives, such as Chief Product Officer Blake Irving left.[16] On April 4, 2012, Yahoo
announced a cut of 2,000 jobs or about 14 percent of its 14,100 workers. The cut is expected to save
around $375 million annually after the layoffs are completed at end of 2012. [17] 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.[18]

On May 13, 2012, Yahoo issued a press release stating that Thompson was no longer with the company,
and would immediately be replaced on an interim basis by Ross Levinsohn, recently appointed head of
Yahoo's new Media group.[18][19][20] Thompson's total compensation for his 130-day tenure with Yahoo was
at least $7.3 million.[21]

In June 2012, Yahoo hired former Google director, Michael Barrett as its Chief Revenue Officer. [22]
Products and services

The front page of the Yahoo website, in November 2011.

Main article:  List of Yahoo!-owned sites and services

Yahoo operates a portal that provides the latest news, entertainment, and sports information. The portal
also gives users access to other Yahoo services like Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Maps, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo
Groups and Yahoo Messenger.

[]Storing personal information and tracking usage


This section's factual accuracy may be compromised due to out-of-date
information. Please help improve the article by updating it. There may be
additional information on the talk page. (June 2012)

Working with comScore, The New York Times found that Yahoo was able to collect far more data about
users than its competitors from its websites and advertising network. By one measure, on average Yahoo
had the potential in December 2007 to build a profile of 2,500 records per month about each of its visitors.
[23]
 Yahoo retains search requests for a period of 13 months. However, in response to European
regulators, Yahoo scrambles the IP address of users after three months by deleting its last eight bits. [24]

On March 29, 2012, Yahoo announced that it would introduce a "Do Not Track" feature that summer,
allowing users to opt out of web-visit tracking and customized ads. [25]

According to a 2008 article in Computerworld, Yahoo has a 2-petabyte, specially built data


warehouse that it uses to analyze the behavior of its half-billion Web visitors per month, processing 24
billion daily events.[26] In contrast the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) database of all US taxpayers
weighs in at only 150 terabytes.[26]
[]Communication
Yahoo provides Internet communication services such as Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Mail. As of May
2007, its e-mail service would offer unlimited storage.[27]

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 closedYahoo
Buzz, MyBlogLog, and numerous other products on April 21, 2011.[28]

Yahoo Photos was closed on September 20, 2007, in favor of Flickr. On October 16, 2007, Yahoo
announced that it would discontinue Yahoo 360°, including bug repairs; the company explained that in
2008 it would instead establish a "universal profile" similar to the Yahoo Mash experimental system.[29]

[]Content
Yahoo partners with numerous content providers in products such as Yahoo Sports, Yahoo
Finance, Yahoo Music, Yahoo Movies, Yahoo Weather, Yahoo News, Yahoo Answers and Yahoo
Games to provide news and related content. Yahoo provides a personalization service, My Yahoo!, which
enables users to combine their favorite Yahoo features, content feeds and information onto a single page.

On March 31, 2008, Yahoo launched Shine, a site tailored for women seeking online information and
advice between the ages of 25 and 54.[30]

[]Co-branded Internet services


Yahoo developed partnerships with broadband providers such as AT&T Inc. (via BellSouth &
SBC), Verizon Communications, Rogers Communications and British Telecom, offering a range of free
and premium Yahoo content and services to subscribers.[specify][vague][citation needed]

[]Mobile Services
Yahoo! Mobile offers services for email, instant messaging, and mobile blogging, as well as information
services, searches and alerts. Servies for the camera phone include entertainment and ring tones.

Yahoo introduced its Internet search system, called OneSearch, for mobile phones on March 20, 2007.
The results include news headlines, images from Flickr, business listings, local weather and links to other
sites. Instead of showing only, for example, popular movies or some critical reviews, one Search lists
local theaters that at the moment are playing the movie, along with user ratings and news headlines
regarding the movie. A zip code or city name is required for OneSearch to start delivering local search
results.

The results of a Web search are listed on a single page and are prioritized into categories. [31]

As if 2012 Yahoo used Novarra's mobile content transcoding service for OneSearch.[32]

On October 8, 2010, Yahoo announced plans to brings video chat to mobile phones via Yahoo
Messenger.[33]

[]Commerce
Yahoo offers shopping services such as Yahoo Shopping, Yahoo Autos, Yahoo Real Estate and Yahoo
Travel, which enables users to gather relevant information and make commercial transactions and
purchases online. Yahoo Auctions were discontinued in 2007 except for Asia.[34]
[]Small business
Yahoo provides business services such as Yahoo DomainKeys, Yahoo Web Hosting, Yahoo Merchant
Solutions, Yahoo Business Email and Yahoo Store to small business owners and professionals allowing
them to build their own online stores using Yahoo's tools. [citation needed]

[]Advertising

Dead external links may exist in this section. You can help by finding suitable


replacements. (May 2012)

Yahoo Search Marketing provides services such as Sponsored Search, Local Advertising and
Product/Travel/Directory Submit that let different businesses advertise their products and services on the
Yahoo network.

Following the closure of a "beta" version on April 30, 2010, the Yahoo Publisher Network was relaunched
as an advertising tool that allows online publishers to monetize their websites through the use of site-
relevant advertisements.[35]

Yahoo launched its new Internet advertisement sales system on February 5, 2007, called Panama. It
allows advertisers to bid for search terms to trigger their ads on search results pages. The system
considers bids, ad quality, clickthrough rates and other factors in ranking ads. Through Panama, Yahoo
aims to provide more relevant search results to users, a better overall experience, and to increase
monetization.[36]

On April 7, 2008, Yahoo announced APT from Yahoo, which was originally called AMP from Yahoo,[37] an
online advertising management platform.[38] The platform simplifies advertising sales by unifying buyer
and seller markets. The service was launched in September 2008. [39]

In September 2011, Yahoo formed an ad selling strategic partnership with 2 of its top
competitors, AOL and Microsoft.[40]

[]Yahoo! Next
Main article:  Yahoo! Next

Yahoo! Next is an incubation ground for future Yahoo technologies currently undergoing testing. It
contains forums for Yahoo users to give feedback to assist in the development of these future Yahoo
technologies.[41]

[]Yahoo! BOSS
Main article:  Yahoo! Search BOSS

Yahoo! Search BOSS is a service that allows developers to build search applications based on Yahoo's
search technology.[42] Early Partners in the program include Hakia, Me.dium, Delver,Daylife and Yebol.[43]

In early 2011 the program switched to a paid model using a cost-per-query model from $0.40 to $0.75
CPM (cost per 1000 BOSS queries). The price, as Yahoo explained, depends on whether the query is of
web, image, news or other information.[44]
[]Yahoo! Meme
Main article:  Yahoo! Meme

Yahoo! Meme is a beta social service, similar to the popular social networking sites Twitter and Jaiku.

[]Y!Connect
Y!Connect enables individuals to leave comments in online publication boards by using their Yahoo ID,
instead of having to register with individual publications. The Wall Street Journal reported that Yahoo
plans to mimic this strategy used by rival Facebook Inc. to help drive traffic to its site. [45]

[]Yahoo! Accessibility
Yahoo has invested resources to increase and improve access to the internet for the disabled community
through the Yahoo Accessibility Lab.[46]

[]Yahoo! Axis
Main article:  Yahoo! Axis

Yahoo! Axis[47] is a desktop web browser extension and mobile browser for iOS devices created and
developed by Yahoo!.The browser made its public debut on May 23, 2012. [48] A copy of the private key
used to sign official Yahoo! browser extensions for Google Chrome was accidentally leaked in the first
public release of the Chrome extension.[49]

[]Yahoo! SearchMonkey
Yahoo! SearchMonkey (often misspelled Search Monkey) was a Yahoo! service which allowed
developers and site owners to use structured data to make Yahoo! Search results more useful and
visually appealing, and drive more relevant traffic to their sites. The service was shut down in October
2010 along with other Yahoo! services as part of the Microsoft and Yahoo! search deal. The name
SearchMonkey is an homage to Greasemonkey. Officially the product name has no space and two capital
letters.

Yahoo! SearchMonkey was selected as one of the top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2008. [50]

Closed down services


Main article:  List of Yahoo!-owned sites and services#Closed/defunct services

Dead external links may exist in this section. You can help by finding suitable


replacements. (May 2012)

Geocities was a popular web hosting service founded in 1995 and was one of the first services to offer
web pages to the public. At one point it was the third-most-browsed site on the World Wide Web[51] Yahoo
purchased GeoCities in 1999 and ten years later, the web host was closed, deleting some seven million
web pages.[52] A great deal of information was lost but many of those sites and pages were mirrored at
the Internet Archive,[53] OOcities.com, and other such databases.[54]
Yahoo! Go, a Java-based phone application with access to most of Yahoo services, was closed on
January 12, 2010.[55]

Yahoo! 360° was a blogging/social networking beta service launched in March 2005 by Yahoo and closed
on July 13, 2009.[56] Yahoo Mash beta was another social service closed after one year of operation prior
to leaving beta status.[57]

Yahoo Photos was shut down on September 20, 2007, in favor of integration with Flickr. Yahoo! Tech was
a website that provided product information and setup advice to users. Yahoo launched the website in
May 2006. On March 11, 2010, Yahoo closed down the service and redirected users to Yahoo's
technology news section.[58] Other discontinued services include Farechase, My Web, Audio Search,
Pets, Live, Kickstart, Briefcase, and Yahoo for Teachers. [59]

Hotjobs was acquired by and merged with Monster.com.

Yahoo! Koprol was an Indonesian geo-tagging website that allowed users to share information about
locations without the use of a GPS device. Koprol was acquired by Yahoo a year following its inception
and, in 2011, 1.5 million people were utilizing the website, with users also based in Singapore, the
Philippines and Vietnam. However, eighty percent of users were Indonesian. [60] Yahoo officially
discontinued Koprol on August 28, 2012, because it did not "not meaningfully drive revenue or
engagement".[61]

[]Twitter slide leak on upcoming changes to Yahoo

Dead external links may exist in this section. You can help by finding suitable


replacements. (May 2012)

On December 15, 2010, one day after Yahoo announced layoffs of 4% of its workers across their
portfolio, MyBlogLog founder Eric Marcoullier posted a slide from a Yahoo employee on Twitter. The slide
was visible during an employee-only strategy webcast indicating changes in Yahoo's offerings. [62]

The following services were in a column under "Sunset": Yahoo Picks, AltaVista, MyM, AlltheWeb, Yahoo
Bookmarks, Yahoo Buzz, del.icio.us, and MyBlogLog. Under "Merge" was: Upcoming,FoxyTunes, Yahoo
Events, Yahoo People Search, Sideline, and FireEagle.

11 other properties were listed that Yahoo was interested in developing into feature sites within the portal
to take the place of the "Sunset" and "Merge" vacancies, including the prior feature services (before the
New Yahoo Mail was launched), were Yahoo Address Book, Calendar, and Notepad. [63] Yahoo's Chief
Product Officer and Executive Vice President Blake Irving unofficially responded to the tweet implying that
whoever sent him that particular slide is fired.[citation needed]

The blog on del.icio.us released a post by Chris Yeh after the leak, detailing that "Sunset" in their case
doesn't necessarily mean they are closing down, and that other possibilities – including del.icio.us leaving
Yahoo (through sale or spinoff) – are still on the table and that del.icio.us will not close down at this time;
"We can only imagine how upsetting the news coverage over the past 24 hours has been to many of you.
Speaking for our team, we were very disappointed by the way that this appeared in the press." [64] On April
27, 2011, an announcement said that del.icio.us had been sold to Avos by Yahoo. [65]
Yahoo Buzz was closed down on April 21, 2011 with no official announcement by Yahoo. [66]

Yahoo closed down MyBlogLog on May 24, 2011.[67]

Revenue model
Dead external links may exist in this section. You can help by finding suitable
replacements. (May 2012)

This article is outdated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or


newly available information. (September 2012)

About 88% of revenues for the fiscal year 2009 came from marketing services. [citation needed] The largest
segment of it was from search advertising, where advertisers bid for search terms to display their ads on
the search results, on average Yahoo makes 2.5 cents to 3 cents from each search.

Other forms of advertising that bring in revenue for Yahoo include display [citation needed] and contextual
advertising, with the latter providing the basis for the "Keystone" initiative (developed by Yahoo to develop
an "ad selection technology for direct and online marketers to place non-guaranteed advertisements on
publisher sites.").[68]

[]Criticism

Main article:  Criticism of Yahoo!

Dead external links may exist in this section. You can help by finding suitable


replacements. (May 2012)

In 2000, Yahoo was taken to court in France by parties seeking to prevent French citizens from
purchasing memorabilia relating to the Nazi Party.[69] In March 2004, Yahoo launched a paid inclusion
program whereby commercial websites were guaranteed listings on the Yahoo search engine. [70] Yahoo
discontinued the program at the end of 2009.[71] Yahoo was criticized for providing ads via the Yahoo ad
network to companies who display them through spyware and adware.[72][73]

Yahoo, as well as other search engines, cooperated with the Chinese government in censoring search
results. In April 2005, dissident Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison for "providing state secrets to
foreign entities"[74] as a result of being identified by IP address by Yahoo[75] The extent of Yahoo's
foreknowledge of Shi's fate was disputed by the company's General Counsel and human rights
organizations.[76] Human rights groups also accuse Yahoo of aiding authorities in the arrest
of dissidents Li Zhi and Jiang Lijun.

In September 2003, dissident Wang Xiaoning was convicted of charges of "incitement to subvert state


power" and was sentenced to ten years in prison. Yahoo Hong Kong connected Wang's group to a
specific Yahoo e-mail address.[77] Both Xiaoning's wife and the World Organization for Human
Rights[78] sued Yahoo under human rights laws on behalf of Wang and Shi. [79]
As a result of media scrutiny relating to Internet child predators and a lack of significant ad revenues,
Yahoo's "user created" chatrooms were closed down in June 2005. [80] On May 25, 2006, Yahoo's image
search was criticized for bringing up sexually explicit images even when SafeSearch was active.[81] Yahoo
is a 40% owner of Alibaba Group, which was a subject of controversy for allowing the sale of shark-
derived products. The company banned the sale of shark fin products on all its e-commerce platforms
effective January 1, 2009. On November 30, 2009, Yahoo was criticized by the Electronic Frontier
Foundation for sending a DMCA notice to whistle-blower website "Cryptome" for publicly posting details,
prices, and procedures[82] on obtaining private information pertaining to Yahoo's subscribers. [83]

After some concerns over censorship of private emails regarding a website affiliated with Occupy Wall
Street protests were raised,[84][85] Yahoo responded with an apology and explained it as an accident. [86]

Yahoo subject of cyber attacks originating in China


Adobe and Yahoo appear to have been among the targets of cyber attacks originating in China now
known as Operation Aurora.[87]

Financial data

Financial data, US$ million[88]

Year 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

5,25
Sales 1,625 3,574 6,426 6,969 7,208 6,460 6,324 4,984
8

1,50
EBITDA 453 1,000 1,066
5

Net 1,89
238 840 751 660 424 597 1,231
Results 6

9,80
Staff 5,500 7,600 11,400 13,900 13,200 14,100
0
Advertising revenue
As of January 2010, Yahoo held the world's largest market share in online display advertising. JP Morgan
put the company’s US market share for display ads at 17%, well ahead of No. 2 Microsoft at 11% and
AOL at 7%.[89]

Executives
Board of Directors (current)

 Alfred Amoroso (2012) – Chairman, Yahoo! Inc.


 John D Hayes (2012) – Executive Vice President, American Express Company and former
President of Lowe & Partners
 Sue James Retired Partner, Ernst & Young LLP
 David Kenny (2011)
 Peter Liguori (2012) Former Chief Operating Officer, Discovery Communications, Inc. and former
Chairman and President of Entertainment, Fox Broadcasting Company
 Daniel S. Loeb (2012)
 Marissa Mayer (2012) - CEO Yahoo! Inc.
 Thomas J McInerney (2012) – Former Executive Vice President and Chief Financial
Officer, IAC/InterActiveCorp
 Brad D. Smith President and Chief Executive Officer, Intuit Inc.
 Maynard Webb, Jr. (2012) – Founder, Webb Investment Network and chairman and former CEO
of LiveOps
 Harry J. Wilson (2012)
 Michael Wolf (2012)
 Kathy Savitt (2012)- Chief Marketing Officer
 Henrique de Castro (2012)- Chief Operating Officer

Board of Directors (past)

 Roy Bostock past Chairman, Yahoo! Inc.


 Patti Hart President and Chief Executive Officer, International Game Technology
 Vyomesh Joshi Executive Vice President, Imaging and Printing Group, Hewlett-Packard
Company
 Arthur Kern Private Investor
 Scott Thompson Yahoo! CEO
 Gary L. Wilson (2001) Private Investor General Partner, Manhattan Pacific Partners, was the
chairman of the board of Northwest Airlines, chief financial officer of Walt Disney Company, and chief
financial officer of Marriott Corporation.[94]

Chief Executive Officers

 Marissa Mayer (2012–present)
 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)

Yahoo! International
Yahoo offers a multi-lingual interface. The site is available in over 20 languages. The official directory for
all of the Yahoo International sites is world.yahoo.com.

The company's international sites are wholly owned by Yahoo, with the exception of Yahoo Japan, in
which it holds a 34.75% minority stake. SoftBank holds 35.45%,[96] Yahoo!Xtra in New Zealand
which Yahoo!7 have 51% of and 49% belongs to Telecom New Zealand and Yahoo!7 in Australia which
is a 50–50 agreement between Yahoo and the Seven Network. Historically, Yahoo entered into joint
venture agreements with SoftBank for the major European sites (UK, France, Germany) and well as
Korea and Japan. In November 2005, Yahoo purchased the minority interests that SoftBank owned in
Europe and Korea.

Yahoo used to hold a 40% stake in Alibaba, which manages a web portal in China using the Yahoo brand
name. Yahoo in the USA does not have direct control over Alibaba, which operates as a completely
independent company. On May 21, 2012, following years of negotiations, Alibaba announced that it would
buy back half the 40% stake owned by Yahoo. The deal would raise about $7.1bn (£4.5bn) for Yahoo,
which has been losing ground to rival Google and Facebook in online advertising.

On March 8, 2011 Yahoo launched its Romania local service after years of delay due to the financial
crisis.[97][98][99][100][101]

Yahoo officially entered the MENA region when it acquired Maktoob, a pan-regional, Arabic-language


hosting and social services online portal, on August 25, 2009. [102] Since the service is pan-regional, Yahoo
officially became Yahoo Maktoob in the region.

Logos and themes


The first logo was used when the company was founded in 1995. It was red and had three icons on each
side.[103]
The logo used on the main page www.yahoo.com used to be red with a black outline and shadow, but in
May 2009, along with a new theme redesign, the logo was changed to purple with no outline or shadow.

Sometimes, the logo is abbreviated with "Y!".[104]

Themes and page designs are different on some international Yahoo home pages, such as Yahoo
Australia,[105] and Yahoo India.[106]

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