Yahoo became an internet celebrity in the 1990s, introducing the globe to the online era and emerging as its icon. The first significant internet corporation to comprehend what users were looking for online was Yahoo. Its shares skyrocketed once it went public in 1996.
The best services were Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Finance, and Yahoo News. With a valuation of over $125 billion by 2000, Yahoo became the first place that people went online.
When Google’s founders offered to sell their business to Yahoo in 1998 for just $1 million, Yahoo turned them down because they didn’t think they needed a search engine. The future would be shaped by this choice. Yahoo started to decline as Google developed to become the most dominant tech business in the world. Yahoo depended on third parties instead of creating its own search technology. Apollo Global Management bought 90% of Yahoo in 2021 for about $5 billion after this expensive error caused the company’s value to plummet.
It all began with two pupils.
Jerry Yang and David Filo, two students, founded Yahoo in 1994 as a straightforward directory known as Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web. In January 1995, it changed its name to Yahoo!, which stands for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.” Yahoo! gained recognition as the internet’s gateway in a matter of months.
Yahoo was the most popular website of the 1990s when it went public on the stock market in 1996. It was worth about $125 billion during the 2000 dot-com boom.
Google Used to Be Up for Grabs
Yahoo lost out on multiple chances to buy Google. The founders of Google were willing to sell for just $1 million in 1998, but Yahoo turned them down. Yahoo wasted another opportunity to acquire Google in 2002. Yahoo rejected Microsoft’s $44.6 billion bid to acquire the company in 2008. Verizon acquired Yahoo for a mere $4.83 billion a few years later.
It Was Expensive to Miss Out on Developing Search Technology
Yahoo stagnated as a result of its reliance on third parties for search technology, including Inktomi, Google, and eventually Bing, in contrast to Google’s ongoing technological advancements.
Yahoo Messenger did not keep up with the mobile era, despite its widespread use. It launched its smartphone app late, improved voice and video chat features slowly, and was surpassed by Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
The globe transitioned to mobile after 2007, amid the smartphone revolution. Yahoo continued to prioritize online portals while Facebook and Google concentrated on mobile-first tactics. Yahoo had seven CEOs in ten years, each of whom tried various tactics without long-term success.
The Company Was Dragged Down by Acquisitions
Yahoo bought more than 100 businesses, the majority of which were bad investments. Notably, Tumblr was only worth $3 million a few years after Yahoo paid $1.1 billion to acquire it, resulting in a huge loss.
A Data Breach Caused Serious Issues
The biggest blow came from the enormous data breach that occurred in 2013–14, when over 3 billion customers’ data was compromised—the worst heist in history. Yahoo’s reputation suffered as a result, and many users began using Gmail instead.
Purchased by Apollo Global Management
Yahoo was revitalized in 2021 when Apollo Global Management purchased 90% of the company. With more than 900 million monthly users, Yahoo is a media and digital services corporation today. Yahoo News and Yahoo Finance are still dominant in their respective markets. But it’s clear that Yahoo is far from its heyday. Yahoo has found it difficult to hold onto its previous popularity in the face of rivals like Google, Facebook, TikTok, and other emerging businesses.
