PROGRES.ID – Yahoo was founded in January 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo, two Stanford University graduate students. The company began as a simple directory of websites organized by category. However, it quickly grew in popularity and expanded into other areas, such as email, news, and search.
In 1995, Yahoo went public and its stock price skyrocketed. The company became one of the most successful and recognizable brands of the dot-com era. It also made a number of acquisitions, such as the search engine company Inktomi and the web hosting service GeoCities.
In the early 2000s, Yahoo faced increasing competition from other tech giants, such as Google and Facebook. The company struggled to keep up with the rapidly changing landscape of the internet and made a number of missteps, such as failing to acquire Google when it had the chance.
In 2007, Yahoo’s co-founder Jerry Yang returned as CEO, but he was unable to turn the company’s fortunes around. In 2008, Microsoft made a bid to acquire Yahoo, but the deal fell through due to disagreements over the price.
In 2009, Carol Bartz was appointed as Yahoo’s new CEO, replacing co-founder Jerry Yang. She tried to revive the struggling company and implemented a restructuring. However, her efforts were not successful and she was fired in 2011.
In 2012, Marissa Mayer was appointed as Yahoo’s new CEO. She had a background in Google and was tasked with improving the company’s performance. Mayer tried to develop Yahoo’s core businesses, such as email, news, and sports. She also tried to strengthen the company’s online advertising business and made a number of small tech company acquisitions.
In 2013, Yahoo bought the blogging company Tumblr for $1.1 billion. Tumblr was a popular microblogging platform at the time. However, the acquisition did not result in large profits for Yahoo and the value of Tumblr declined in the following years.
In 2014, Yahoo suffered a major security breach in which around 500 million user accounts were stolen by hackers. This incident was one of the largest in internet history and threatened Yahoo’s reputation.
In 2016, Verizon announced its intention to buy Yahoo for $4.8 billion. However, after the sale, Verizon discovered that Yahoo had suffered two major security breaches and demanded a price reduction. The sale of Yahoo was finally completed in 2017 for $4.48 billion.
After the sale of Yahoo, Verizon spun off Yahoo’s core businesses, such as email, news, and sports, into a new company called Oath. However, Oath struggled and in 2019 it was renamed Verizon Media.
In 2021, Verizon Media was sold to investment firm Apollo Global Management for $5 billion. Following the sale, Verizon Media has renamed Yahoo once again.
Despite undergoing many changes over the past few decades, the Yahoo brand remains known by many people around the world, and its email service is still used by many. The history of Yahoo demonstrates how quickly the technology industry changes and how companies must continue to evolve in order to remain relevant in the constantly changing digital world.
