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Nazi memorabilia controversy
For more details on this topic, see LICRA v. Yahoo!.
In 2000, Yahoo! was taken to court in France by parties seeking to prevent French citizens from purchasing memorabilia relating to the Nazi Party. Yahoo! France had already instituted policies preventing the sale of Nazi memorabilia on its site, and prohibiting Nazi-based discussions on its message boards, but the parties sought to have Yahoo! introduce censorship technology to block French citizens from accessing similar material on Yahoo! websites in countries where local laws permitted Nazi related auctions/discussions
About 88% of total revenues for the fiscal year 2006 came from marketing services. The largest segment of it comes 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. With the new search advertising system "Panama" Yahoo! aims to increase revenue generated from search.[77]
Other forms of advertising which bring in revenue for Yahoo! include display and contextual advertising.
Working with comScore, The New York Times found that Yahoo! is able to collect far more data about Web users than its competitors from its Web sites and its 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.[78]
Yahoo! Search BOSS is a new service that allows developers to build search applications based on Yahoo!'s search technology.[75] Early Partners in the program include Hakia, Me.dium, Delver, Daylife and Yebol
Yahoo! Next is an incubation ground for future Yahoo! technologies currently in their beta testing phase. It contains forums for Yahoo! users to give feedback to assist in the development of these future Yahoo! technologies. it was created by Jerry Page and David Shin.
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. Yahoo! Publisher Network is an advertising tool for online publishers to place advertisements relevant to their content to monetize their websites.
Yahoo! launched its new Internet advertisement sales system on February 5, 2007 called Panama. It allows advertisers to bid for search terms based on their popularity to display their ads on search results pages. The system takes bids, ad quality, click-through rates and other factors into consideration in determining how ads are ranked on search results pages. Through Panama, Yahoo! aims to provide more relevant search results to users, a better overall experience, as well as increase monetization—to earn more from the ads it shows.
On April 7, 2008, Yahoo! announced APT from Yahoo!, which was originally called AMP! from Yahoo![72], an online advertising management platform.[73] The platform seeks to simplify advertising sales by unifying buyer and seller markets. The service was launched in September 2008
Yahoo! provides services such as Yahoo! Domains, 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.
Yahoo! also offers HotJobs to help recruiters find the talent they seek
Yahoo! offers commerce 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. In addition, Yahoo! offers an e-commerce platform called Yahoo! Merchant Solutions (also known as Yahoo! Store) and hosts more Top 500 internet retailers than any other hosted e-commerce solution. Yahoo! Auctions were discontinued in 2007 except for Asia
Yahoo! introduced its Internet search system, called oneSearch, developed for mobile phones on March 20, 2007. The company's officials stated that in distinction from ordinary Web searches, Yahoo!'s new service presents a list of actual information, which may include: news headlines, images from Yahoo!'s Flickr photos site, business listings, local weather and links to other sites. Instead of showing only, for example, popular movies or some critical reviews, oneSearch lists local theaters that at the moment are playing a certain movie, user ratings and news headlines regarding the movie. A zip code or city name is required for Yahoo! oneSearch to start delivering local search results.
The results of a Web search are listed on a single page and are prioritized into categories. The list of results is based on calculations that Yahoo! computers make on certain information the user is seeking.
Yahoo! has announced they also plan to adopt Novarra's mobile content transcoding service for the oneSearch platform
Yahoo! Mobile includes services for on-the-go messaging, such as email, instant messaging, and mobile blogging; information, such as search and alerts; and fun and games, including ring tones, mobile games, and Yahoo! Photos for camera phones. These require software to be installed on the user's device.
Yahoo! has developed partnerships with different broadband providers such as AT&T (via BellSouth & SBC), Verizon Communications, Rogers Communications and British Telecom, offering a range of free and premium Yahoo! content and services to subscribers.
Yahoo! partners with hundreds of premier content providers in products such as Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Music, Yahoo! Movies, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Answers and Yahoo! Games to provide media contents and news. Yahoo! also provides a personalization service, My Yahoo!, which enables users to collect their favorite Yahoo! features, content feeds, and information into a single page.
On March 31, 2008 Yahoo! launched web portal shine.yahoo.com another Yahoo! property dedicated to women between the ages of 25 and 54. Yahoo! called this demographic underserved by current Yahoo! properties.
Yahoo! provides internet communication services such as Yahoo! Messenger and Yahoo! Mail, the largest e-mail service in the world, with almost half the market share.[64] In March 2007, Yahoo! announced that their e-mail service would offer unlimited storage beginning May 2007.
Yahoo! Mail premium service MailPlus provides additional functionality including POP/SMTP access to Yahoo! Mail accounts, although such functionality is already provided for free by Yahoo! competitor Gmail. Some MailPlus subscribers have reported difficulties in successfully cancelling their subscriptions, which are automatically renewed and paid by credit card. Although other areas of the MailPlus web interface appear to function correctly, a blank page appears when users select "cancel service" from the list of options to manage the service. It is unknown whether this is an accidental oversight by Yahoo! programmers, or a deliberate attempt to retain MailPlus subscription cash flows.
Yahoo! also offers social networking services and user-generated content in products such as My Web, Yahoo! Personals, Yahoo! 360°, Delicious, Flickr, and Yahoo! Buzz.
Yahoo! Photos was shut down on September 20, 2007 in favor of Flickr. On October 16, 2007, Yahoo! announced that they will no longer provide support or perform bug fixes on Yahoo! 360° as they intend to abandon it in early 2008 in favor of a "universal profile" that will be similar to their Mash experimental system.
As of December 11, 2007, Google and Microsoft's Bing "store personal information for 18 months" and Yahoo! and AOL (Time Warner) "retain search requests for 13 months".
Yahoo! provides a wide array of internet services that cater to most online activities. It operates the web portal http://www.yahoo.com which provides content including the latest news, entertainment, and sports information, and gives users quick access to other Yahoo! services like Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Maps, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Groups and Yahoo! Messenger. The majority of the product offerings are available globally in more than 20 languages.
Yahoo! has tried to change its direction since chief executive Carol Bartz replaced co-founder Jerry Yang in January 2009.
In July, Microsoft and Yahoo! agreed to a deal that will see Yahoo!'s websites use both Microsoft's search technology and search advertising. Yahoo! in turn will become the sales team for banner advertising for both companies. While Microsoft will provide algorithmic search results, Yahoo! will control the presentation and personalization of results for searches on its pages. This deal is not expected to be finalised before spring 2010 and is awaiting regulatory approval.
On July 21, 2009, Yahoo! launched a new version of its front page, called Metro. The new page allows users to customize it through the prominent "My Favorites" panel on the left side and integrate third-party web services and launch them within one page. Such applications include pages of Netflix, E-trade, Facebook, and other sites
Microsoft and Yahoo! pursued merger discussions in 2005, 2006, and 2007, that were all ultimately unsuccessful. At the time, analysts were skeptical about the wisdom of a business combination.
On February 1, 2008, after its friendly takeover offer was rebuffed by Yahoo!, Microsoft made an unsolicited takeover bid to buy Yahoo! for US$44.6 billion in cash and stock. Days later, Yahoo! considered alternatives to the merger with Microsoft, including a merger with internet giant Google[41] or a potential transaction with News Corp.[42] However, on February 11, 2008, Yahoo! decided to reject Microsoft's offer as "substantially undervaluing" Yahoo!'s brand, audience, investments, and growth prospects.] As of February 22, two Detroit based pension companies have sued Yahoo! and their board of directors for breaching their duty to shareholders by opposing Microsoft's takeover bid and pursuing "value destructive" third-party deals.[44][dead link] In early March, Google CEO Eric Schmidt went on record saying that he was concerned that a potential MICROSOFT-Yahoo! merger might hurt the Internet by compromising its openness. The value of Microsoft's cash and stock offer declined with Microsoft's stock price, falling to $42.2 billion by April 4.[46] On April 5, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent a letter to Yahoo!'s board of directors stating that if within three weeks they had not accepted the deal, Microsoft would approach shareholders directly in hopes of a electing a new board and moving forward with merger talks; this is known as a hostile takeover.[47][dead link] In response, Yahoo! stated on April 7 that they were not against a merger, but that they wanted a better offer. In addition, they stated that Microsoft's "aggressive" approach was worsening their relationship and the chances of a "friendly" merger.[48] Later the same day, Yahoo! stated that the original $45 billion offer was not acceptable.[48] Following this, there has been considerable discussion of having Time Warner's AOL and Yahoo! merge, instead of the originally proposed Microsoft deal.[49]
On May 3, 2008, Microsoft withdrew the offer. During a meeting between Ballmer and Yang, Microsoft had offered to raise its offer by $5 billion to $33 per share, while Yahoo! demanded $37. One of Ballmer's lieutenants suggested that Yang would implement a poison pill to make the takeover as difficult as possible, saying "They are going to burn the furniture if we go hostile. They are going to destroy the place."[50][51]
Analysts say that Yahoo!'s shares, which closed at $28.67 on May 2, are likely to drop below $25 and perhaps as low as $20 on May 5, which would put significant pressure on Yang to engineer a turnaround of the company. Some suggest that institutional investors would file lawsuits against Yahoo!'s board of directors for not acting in shareholder interest by refusing Microsoft's offer.[52][53]
On May 5, 2008, following Microsoft's withdrawal Yahoo!'s stock plunged some 15% lower to $23.02 in Monday trading and trimmed about $6 billion off of its market capitalization.
After Microsoft's failed bid to acquire Yahoo!, Microsoft is rumored to be looking at acquiring LiveDoor, a leading Japanese portal and the leading blogging service in Japan, to strengthen its position against Yahoo! Japan.
On June 12, 2008, Yahoo announced that it had ended all talks with Microsoft about purchasing either part of the business (the search advertising business) or all of the company. Talks had taken place the previous weekend (June 8), during which Microsoft allegedly told Yahoo that it was no longer interested in a purchase of the entire company at the price offered earlier -- $33/share. Also on June 12, Yahoo announced a non-exclusive search advertising alliance with Google.[55] Upon this announcement, many executives and senior employees have announced their plans to leave the company as it appears that they have lost confidence in Yahoo's strategies. According to market analysts, these pending departures are also impacting Wall Street's perception of the company.[56]
On July 7, 2008, Microsoft said it would reconsider proposing another bid for Yahoo if the company's nine directors were ousted at the annual meeting scheduled to be held on August 1, 2008. Microsoft believes it would be able to better negotiate with a new board.
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, calling the current board irrational in its approach to talks with Microsoft, launched a proxy fight to replace Yahoo's board. On July 21, 2008 Yahoo settled with Carl Icahn, agreeing to appoint him and two allies to an expanded board.
On November 20, 2008, almost 10 months after Microsoft's initial offer of $33 per share, Yahoo's stock (YHOO) dropped to a 52-week low, trading at only $8.94 per share.
On November 30, 2008, Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo's Search business for $20 billion.
On July 29, 2009, it was announced with a 10 year deal that Microsoft will have full access to Yahoo search engine to be used in Microsoft future projects for its search engine Bing.[60] Under the deal, Microsoft was not required to pay any cash up front to Yahoo. The day after the deal was announced, Yahoo's share price declined more than 10% to $15.14, about 60% lower than Microsoft's takeover bid a year earlier.
Main article: List of Yahoo-owned sites and services
Yahoo! provides a wide array of internet services that cater to most online activities. It operates the web portal http://www.yahoo.com which provides content including the latest news, entertainment, and sports information, and gives users quick access to other Yahoo! services like Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Maps, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Groups and Yahoo! Messenger. The majority of the product offerings are available globally in more than 20 languages.
Yahoo! has tried to change its direction since chief executive Carol Bartz replaced co-founder Jerry Yang in January 2009.[61]
In July, Microsoft and Yahoo! agreed to a deal that will see Yahoo!'s websites use both Microsoft's search technology and search advertising. Yahoo! in turn will become the sales team for banner advertising for both companies. While Microsoft will provide algorithmic search results, Yahoo! will control the presentation and personalization of results for searches on its pages. This deal is not expected to be finalised before spring 2010 and is awaiting regulatory approval.
On July 21, 2009, Yahoo! launched a new version of its front page, called Metro. The new page allows users to customize it through the prominent "My Favorites" panel on the left side and integrate third-party web services and launch them within one page. Such applications include pages of Netflix, E-trade, Facebook, and other sites.[62]
Microsoft and Yahoo! pursued merger discussions in 2005, 2006, and 2007, that were all ultimately unsuccessful. At the time, analysts were skeptical about the wisdom of a business combination.[37][38]
On February 1, 2008, after its friendly takeover offer was rebuffed by Yahoo!, Microsoft made an unsolicited takeover bid to buy Yahoo! for US$44.6 billion in cash and stock.[39][40] Days later, Yahoo! considered alternatives to the merger with Microsoft, including a merger with internet giant Google[41] or a potential transaction with News Corp.[42] However, on February 11, 2008, Yahoo! decided to reject Microsoft's offer as "substantially undervaluing" Yahoo!'s brand, audience, investments, and growth prospects.[43] As of February 22, two Detroit based pension companies have sued Yahoo! and their board of directors for breaching their duty to shareholders by opposing Microsoft's takeover bid and pursuing "value destructive" third-party deals.[44][dead link] In early March, Google CEO Eric Schmidt went on record saying that he was concerned that a potential Microsoft-Yahoo! merger might hurt the Internet by compromising its openness.[45] The value of Microsoft's cash and stock offer declined with Microsoft's stock price, falling to $42.2 billion by April 4.[46] On April 5, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent a letter to Yahoo!'s board of directors stating that if within three weeks they had not accepted the deal, Microsoft would approach shareholders directly in hopes of a electing a new board and moving forward with merger talks; this is known as a hostile takeover.[47][dead link] In response, Yahoo! stated on April 7 that they were not against a merger, but that they wanted a better offer. In addition, they stated that Microsoft's "aggressive" approach was worsening their relationship and the chances of a "friendly" merger.[48] Later the same day, Yahoo! stated that the original $45 billion offer was not acceptable.[48] Following this, there has been considerable discussion of having Time Warner's AOL and Yahoo! merge, instead of the originally proposed Microsoft deal.[49]
On May 3, 2008, Microsoft withdrew the offer. During a meeting between Ballmer and Yang, Microsoft had offered to raise its offer by $5 billion to $33 per share, while Yahoo! demanded $37. One of Ballmer's lieutenants suggested that Yang would implement a poison pill to make the takeover as difficult as possible, saying "They are going to burn the furniture if we go hostile. They are going to destroy the place."[50][51]
Analysts say that Yahoo!'s shares, which closed at $28.67 on May 2, are likely to drop below $25 and perhaps as low as $20 on May 5, which would put significant pressure on Yang to engineer a turnaround of the company. Some suggest that institutional investors would file lawsuits against Yahoo!'s board of directors for not acting in shareholder interest by refusing Microsoft's offer.[52][53]
On May 5, 2008, following Microsoft's withdrawal Yahoo!'s stock plunged some 15% lower to $23.02 in Monday trading and trimmed about $6 billion off of its market capitalization.[54]
After Microsoft's failed bid to acquire Yahoo!, Microsoft is rumored to be looking at acquiring LiveDoor, a leading Japanese portal and the leading blogging service in Japan, to strengthen its position against Yahoo! Japan.
On June 12, 2008, Yahoo announced that it had ended all talks with Microsoft about purchasing either part of the business (the search advertising business) or all of the company. Talks had taken place the previous weekend (June 8), during which Microsoft allegedly told Yahoo that it was no longer interested in a purchase of the entire company at the price offered earlier -- $33/share. Also on June 12, Yahoo announced a non-exclusive search advertising alliance with Google.[55] Upon this announcement, many executives and senior employees have announced their plans to leave the company as it appears that they have lost confidence in Yahoo's strategies. According to market analysts, these pending departures are also impacting Wall Street's perception of the company.[56]
On July 7, 2008, Microsoft said it would reconsider proposing another bid for Yahoo if the company's nine directors were ousted at the annual meeting scheduled to be held on August 1, 2008. Microsoft believes it would be able to better negotiate with a new board.[57]
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, calling the current board irrational in its approach to talks with Microsoft, launched a proxy fight to replace Yahoo's board. On July 21, 2008 Yahoo settled with Carl Icahn, agreeing to appoint him and two allies to an expanded board.
On November 20, 2008, almost 10 months after Microsoft's initial offer of $33 per share, Yahoo's stock (YHOO) dropped to a 52-week low, trading at only $8.94 per share.[58]
On November 30, 2008, Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo's Search business for $20 billion.[59]
On July 29, 2009, it was announced with a 10 year deal that Microsoft will have full access to Yahoo search engine to be used in Microsoft future projects for its search engine Bing.[60] Under the deal, Microsoft was not required to pay any cash up front to Yahoo. The day after the deal was announced, Yahoo's share price declined more than 10% to $15.14, about 60% lower than Microsoft's takeover bid a year earlier.
Yahoo! was one of the surviving large Internet companies after the dot-com bubble burst. Nevertheless, on September 26, 2001, Yahoo! stocks closed at a five-year low of $4.06 (split-adjusted).
Yahoo! formed partnerships with telecommunications and Internet providers to create content-rich broadband services to compete with AOL. On June 3, 2002, SBC and Yahoo! launched a national co-branded dial-up Internet access service.[25] In July 2003, BT Group Openworld announced an alliance with Yahoo!.[26] On August 23, 2005, Yahoo! and Verizon Communications launched an integrated DSL service.[27]
In late 2002, Yahoo! began to bolster its search services by acquiring other search engines. In December 2002, Yahoo! acquired Inktomi Corporation. In February 2005, Yahoo! acquired Konfabulator and rebranded it Yahoo! Widgets,[28] a desktop application and in July 2003, it acquired Overture Services, Inc. and its subsidiaries AltaVista and AlltheWeb. On February 18, 2004, Yahoo! dropped Google-powered results and returned to using its own technology to provide search results.
In 2004, in response to Google's release of Gmail, Yahoo! upgraded the storage of all free Yahoo! Mail accounts from 4 MB to 1 GB, and all Yahoo! Mail Plus accounts to 2 GB. On July 9, 2004, Yahoo! acquired e-mail provider Oddpost to add an Ajax interface to Yahoo! Mail.[29] On October 13, 2005, Yahoo! and Microsoft announced that Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger would become interoperable. In 2007, Yahoo! took out the storage meters, thus allowing users unlimited storage.
Yahoo! continued acquiring companies to expand its range of services, particularly Web 2.0 services. Yahoo! Launchcast became Yahoo! Music on February 9, 2005. On March 20, 2005, Yahoo! purchased photo sharing service Flickr.[30] On March 29, 2005, the company launched its blogging and social networking service Yahoo! 360°. In June 2005, Yahoo! acquired blo.gs, a service based on RSS feed aggregation. Yahoo! then bought online social event calendar Upcoming.org on October 4, 2005. Yahoo! acquired social bookmark site del.icio.us on December 9, 2005 and then playlist sharing community Webjay on January 9, 2006.
On August 27, 2007, Yahoo! released a new version of Yahoo! Mail. It adds Yahoo! Messenger integration. (which includes Windows Live Messenger due to the networks' federation) and free text messages (not necessarily free to the receiver) to mobile phones in the U.S., Canada, India and the Philippines.[31]
On January 29, 2008, Yahoo! announced that the company was laying off 1,000 employees as the company had suffered severely in its inability to effectively compete with industry search leader Google. The cuts represent 7 percent of the company's workforce of 14,300. Employees are being invited to apply for an unknown number of new positions that are expected to open as the company expands areas that promise faster growth.[32]
In February, 2008, Yahoo! acquired Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Maven Networks, a supplier of internet video players and video advertising tools, for approx. $160 million.
Yahoo! announced on November 17, 2008 that Yang would be stepping down as CEO.[33]
On December 10, 2008, Yahoo! began laying off 1,520 employees around the world as the company managed its way through the global economic downturn.[34] By carefully managing expenses, Yahoo! has remained one of the most profitable pure-Internet companies in the world[35] , and maintains billions of dollars on its balance sheet[36], despite continued "softness" in the advertising world.
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