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Yahoo!

Webopedia Staff
Last Updated May 24, 2021 8:00 am

Yahoo is a World Wide Web directory founded by David Filo and Jerry Yang at Stanford University. They began compiling and categorizing Web pages in 1994. By 1996, Yahoo was one of the most popular websites. It has been declining ever since the end of 2000, however. Yahoo s domain websites have also decreased in popularity. It s still considered one of the top ten search engines as of 2020.

In its earlier years, Yahoo offered user-generated content and social networking tools, such as My Web, Delicious, Flickr, Yahoo Buzz, and Yahoo 360 . Many of these products have since been cut from its lineup. Yahoo has partnered with various content providers in Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Music, Yahoo Weather, Yahoo News, and Yahoo Games. The company has multiple resources available for users on its home page. My Yahoo allows users to keep their apps, weather, and news in one place. Visit mail.yahoo.com if you would like to create a new Yahoo account.

In 2017, Verizon Communications acquired the majority of the Yahoo Internet business for $4.48 billion, except for its shares in Alibaba and Yahoo! Japan. Those shares were transferred to the Yahoo company successor, Altaba. Yahoo! Japan was sold to SoftBank in 2018, and Altaba sold its stake in Alibaba and shut down in 2019.

Today, Yahoo is still one of the most popular email providers. One benefit of Yahoo is its fully encrypted email. Yahoo Mail s new mobile feature allows users to avoid searching for something in their email by presenting different views, organized by subject.

Some attribute Yahoo’s decline to its failure to keep up with emerging trends and a series of missed opportunities. In 1998, Yahoo had the opportunity to buy Google’s PageRank system but refused the offer. Google once again made an offer to Yahoo in 2002, but it was also refused. At the time, Yahoo was hoping to build a superior search engine to compete with Google.