Yahoo

Fred Amoroso ( Chairman )

Yahoo (own spelling YAHOO! ) is one of the world's largest Internet company based in Sunnyvale (California, USA). With over 700 million users worldwide, Yahoo is one of the most successful and largest Internet portals with online products and services for residential and business customers. David Filo and Jerry Yang founded the company in January 1994. The company and the range of discount then grew rapidly. In March 1995, Yahoo went with 46 employees at the stock exchange. 2009 worked a total of around 13,500 people for Yahoo. Yahoo, whose services are available in 46 languages ​​, is now represented in 70 countries.

Company History

In 1994, the founder of Yahoo, David Filo and Jerry Yang worked - at that time PhD students at the Faculty of Electronics at the University of Stanford - on a navigation aid for the Internet. The list of recorded in the web catalog web pages grew rapidly at that time, after which the founders arranged the contents by category. This resulted in an annotated bookmark collection. The website was launched under the name " Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web." In autumn 1994, already a million inquiries and 100,000 users were recorded. The following year, the company was officially founded Yahoo. In 1995, Yahoo was converted into a public limited company, a year later saw the launch on the stock exchange. On January 28, 1996 Yahoo was founded in Germany, the German -language portal page was published on 10 October 1996. The Yahoo Germany GmbH was formed in November 1996 as a joint venture with Softbank ( Ziff Davis ). In the following years, Yahoo opened up more national markets with the opening of its portals in Japan, Britain, France ( 1996), Singapore, Australia, Korea, Denmark, Norway, Sweden ( 1997), Italy, Spain ( 1998), People's Republic of China ( 1999), Argentina, India and Canada (both 2000).

Yahoo is one of the pioneers of the Internet and has benefited greatly from the boom in the 1990s, the new medium. With the increasing advertising revenue through online advertising, the share price rose to record levels. With the collapse of the so-called dot-com bubble went 2000/2001, the advertising revenue fell massively. Revenue plunged and stagnated in the following fiscal quarters.

In this difficult situation, and under the new boss Terry Semel, the company changed its business strategy. Until that time, Yahoo had a lot of services like e- mail accounts, online scheduler so users offered free of charge to generate the largest possible number of customer contacts on its sides. Because: The more customer contacts were realized, the more expensive could sell ads on Yahoo 's pages. This strategy was also based on all the services that he "needs" to offer the users from one source to bind the customer.

Yahoo expanded its product range and finally also offered fee-based services. For this example, Yahoo bought the Job Market HotJobs and the photo page Flickr and integrated them into its range. Apart from a small range of paid content and services the majority of sales will be generated but still about advertising, thus ensuring that users are most Yahoo- free products available.

Until after the turn of the millennium Yahoo used the data sets of AltaVista, Inktomi, and finally by Google as a basis for your own search engine. In February 2004, but the contracts were terminated with Google. Yahoo provides its own search algorithms and indices Pending implementation of the agreed with Microsoft in February 2009 Search Alliance. A specialist in online search and marketing and on 19 March 2003 adopted the search engine Inktomi: To make against Google in the search engine sector lost ground, were on 7 October 2003 with Overture Services (Yahoo Search Marketing later).

2005 Yahoo rose to one billion U.S. dollars in the Chinese online portal operator Alibaba.com. In May 2012, Yahoo began to reduce its share since September 2012 and holds 20% of Alibaba.

April 30, 2007 Yahoo acquired the Right Media advertising specialists. The price should have at 680 million U.S. dollars ( 500 million euros ) located. Shortly thereafter, in May 2007, the New York Times reported of merger talks between Microsoft and Yahoo, but these were aborted without success. Nevertheless, Microsoft to take over Yahoo for 44 billion U.S. dollars announced on 1 February 2008. A similar offer was presented to the shareholders. This offer pointed Yahoo back again and demanded per share around nine dollars more. On 4 May 2008, Microsoft pulled the offer back for good. On 18 June 2007 Yahoo CEO Terry Semel resigned. The co-founder Jerry Yang took over his position. End of 2007, Yahoo acquired the global online advertising network Blue Lithium for almost 300 million dollars.

November 18, 2008 Jerry Yang resigned as CEO of Yahoo. On 14 January 2009, the software manager Carol Bartz took over the office.

In July 2009, Yahoo entered into a strategic alliance with Microsoft in the field of Internet search. Microsoft uses its own search technologies and the Yahoo order to develop a new, more powerful search engine. The Yahoo search technology will therefore be part of this new search. In addition, responsible, designed and developed Yahoo on their own pages continue the search, thus uses only the backend back to another search technology. The competent authorities in the U.S. and Europe have approved this partnership in February 2010 without conditions, the reaction is carried out successively. In February 2010, Yahoo entered into a global partnership with the social network Twitter.

Maktoob.com: In August 2009, the acquisition of one of the leading Internet - Communities in the Arab world followed. The new home page of Yahoo went over Germany at the start, which allows users to post favorite website in his profile on 16 December 2009.

In early March 2010 Yahoo celebrated its 15th anniversary. Since 8 June 2010, the global integration of Facebook content takes place. Users who use both Yahoo and Facebook, their accounts can thus connect.

On September 6, 2011, Yahoo separated immediately from their Chief Executive Officer ( CEO) Carol Bartz and appointed Chief Financial Officer Timothy Morse to the interim CEO. Morse was replaced on January 9, 2012 by Scott Thompson as permanent CEO. Early 2012, co-founder Yang put down his seat on the board and retired from the company.

On May 13, 2012 Scott Thompson resigned as CEO, as he had stated in his resume an academic title he had never acquired. Interim successor was the former head of the global media business, Ross Levinsohn. At the same time the Chairman of the Board Roy Bostock stepped back in order to accelerate the change of leadership for the new board. He was replaced by Fred Amoroso. Since 16 July 2012, Marissa Mayer, a former vice-president of Google, CEO of Yahoo.

In June 2013 Yahoo took over the blog platform Tumblr - as the purchase price, the company called in a stock exchange release " an estimated $ 990 million ." The startup should continue to work independently; Founder David Karp was boss. On October 17, 2013 Yahoo told the Washington Post that HTTPS should be used from 8 January 2014 standard encryption protocol.

Beginning of 2014 turned Marissa Mayer at CES plans before, like Yahoo would continue to earn money with online content. Focus is on " Digital Magazine" on smartphones and tablets, the first two lines will be Food and Technology. Both should be explicitly addressed to ordinary users, not experts and would adapt in choice of subject and language in it. Displays would not stand as a banner, but in the flow of editorial content, by his own admission but clearly recognizable as advertisements. In addition, advertising revenues should grow significantly in tumblr 2014. Advertising on tumblr will be attractive by the thematic orientation of the individual blogs by focusing the target groups.

For March 21, 2014 Yahoo concentrated all the services so far from a European branch, such as Yahoo Germany GmbH, have been provided in Ireland.

Origin of the name

According to the English and German corporate website is the name of the Internet portal Yahoo even an acronym for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle, but was of the two founders due to the general definition of yahoo as "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth " (English for naughty, genuine, uncouth ) selected. The acronym has been invented so matching the term, accordingly, a backronym and wrong acronym.

Other sources mention the origin of the name in Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels.

Financial data

  • There are 1.21 billion shares of Yahoo.
  • The course was on 24 April 2012 at 11.67 euros.
  • The market value was thus ( 19.5 billion USD) at 14.7 billion euros.
  • Microsoft offered $ 31 per share in early 2008, but Yahoo refused.
  • The Yahoo's stock price in 1997 was € 0.86, the maximum value it reached in early 2000 with Euro 119.55.
  • Company founder David Filo today holds six percent of the shares, his colleague Jerry Yang four percent.

Offers

Worldwide are currently using more than 700 million people yahoo. Among the products and services of Yahoo, among others, the Yahoo home page, Yahoo News, Yahoo Search, Flickr, Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger include, for example in Germany.

Yahoo offers with Yahoo Mail for years a private offer free e-mail with unlimited storage space and a part with about 300 million users, of which nearly six million in Germany, in addition to Hotmail among the market leaders in the free- mail providers. A private Instant Messenger called Yahoo Messenger has existed since 1998.

Some services of Yahoo occur under their own brand names, such as:

  • AlltheWeb ( set on 4 April 2011)
  • AltaVista ( set in July 2013)
  • Delicious ( mid-2011 sold )
  • Flickr
  • MyBlogLog ( was set on 24 May 2011 and replaced by Yahoo Pulse )
  • Tumblr
  • Upcoming

Criticism

In March 2002, signed more than 300 companies, including Yahoo, a " Public Statement on self-discipline " the Chinese state. In it, the signatory companies commit " to produce any dangerous information to publish or disseminate that could endanger state security or social stability ." Yahoo signed uncritically and without finding a compromise, featuring censored results not (in contrast to, for example, Google).

Furthermore, the company seems to deliver data about its users to the Chinese authorities. Two imprisoned Chinese journalists had filed a lawsuit against Yahoo intently, because they saw the cause of arrest and subsequent torture in the information disclosure by Yahoo. The lawsuit has since been settled by an agreement. In the case of the convicted to 10 years in prison journalist Shi Tao was announced that Yahoo had supplied the necessary information to the arrest of the Chinese authority. The Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders showed indignantly.

Reporters Without Borders criticized Yahoo in 2006 for his sharp alleged role in the arrest of four Chinese dissidents.

The British journalists' union NUJ has called on 2 June 2006 its 40,000 members to boycott Yahoo. Reason for the action of the National Union of Journalists, which also has members in Ireland, according to NUJ is the cooperation of the Group in China's censorship on the Internet.

In June 2007 there was a re- action of the World Organization for Human Rights, Yahoo, the Chinese government would have helped in the identification of dissident civil rights activists.

In October 2009, reported the blog ZDNet Government that Yahoo should have provided during the protests in Iran, the data of 200,000 Yahoo users the government. This hoax was corrected immediately.

In April 2011 it was announced that Yahoo wants to keep with its search engine data for 18 months.

In November 2011, reported the agency Dortmund shape manufactory that Yahoo with its terms and conditions for private customers may infringe applicable German law. The requirements for a warning are given from the perspective of the Federation of Consumer Organizations, is speaker Carola Elbrecht quoted. The bone of contention was a clause stating that the users of certain Yahoo services should be for " responsible " for their communication partners about " informing " that the company evaluates the complete data exchange - for advertising purposes among others. The competent for Yahoo data protection supervisory illuminating the case.

July 12, 2012 it was announced that it was crackers managed to identify hundreds of thousands of user account names, including passwords, because the corresponding database was not sufficiently secured yet sufficiently encrypted. The credentials were published on the Internet.

Yahoo and the data wiretapping scandal NSA 2013

In the summer of 2013 it was announced by the whistleblower Edward Snowden that the National Security Agency ( NSA) had approached the email provider to request communication data of the customers in a big way. Yahoo, like other providers, published in the wake of the debate about this privacy scandal so-called " transparency reports ". In the graph on these statistics can be seen: The U.S. authorities brought in the first half of 2013 most of the data of Yahoo's customers in the United States ( 12,444 requests ), followed by Germany ( 4295 ) and at a greater distance from Italy, Taiwan, France and Great Britain.

Other documents show that the British intelligence agency GCHQ has the Yahoo video chats monitored over the years.

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