New Delhi. It is very rare in the Internet world that a company becomes the icon of an era. Yahoo was the same name in the 90s. An internet superstar who introduced the world to the online world. Yahoo was the first major Internet company of that era to understand what people were looking for on the Web. After going public in 1996, its stock started touching the sky. Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo News, every service was on top of the world. By 2000, the company’s value exceeded $125 billion and Yahoo became the first stop for everyone visiting the Internet.
In 1998, Google’s founders were ready to sell all of Google to Yahoo for just $1 million. But Yahoo refused saying that they did not need a search engine. This was the mistake that decided the direction of the future. Google became the most powerful tech company in the world and the countdown to decline began for Yahoo. Yahoo always chose to depend on others instead of developing its own search technology. This mistake was so serious that in 2021, Apollo Global Management bought 90 percent stake in the company, which was once valued at $ 125 billion, for $ 5 billion.
Students Jerry Yang and David Filo laid the foundation.
In 1994, two Stanford students, Jerry Yang and David Filo, created a simple directory called Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web. This was a directory of websites. In January 1995, it was renamed Yahoo! Kept. Yahoo! Means “Yet Another Hierarchical Official Oracle.” Within a few months “Yahoo!” It became so popular that it came to be called the gateway to the Internet. In 1996, Yahoo was listed in the stock market. Yahoo was the most popular site on the Internet in the 1990s. At the time of the dot-com bubble in 2000, its value was approximately $125 billion.
The opportunity to buy Google had come
Yahoo missed the opportunity to buy Google several times. In 1998, Google founders were ready to sell their company to Yahoo for only one million dollars. But, Yahoo did not acquire Google saying that it did not need a search engine. In 2002, Yahoo once again had the opportunity to buy Google, but again it lost it. In 2008, Microsoft tried to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion, but Yahoo refused. A few years later, it was the same Yahoo that Verizon bought for just $4.83 billion.
It was not necessary to develop search technology
Yahoo always chose to depend on others instead of developing its own search technology. Sometimes the search results of Inktomy, sometimes Google and later Bing were used. On the other hand, Google continued to advance its technology and Yahoo became stagnant with time. Meanwhile, despite its popularity, Yahoo Messenger could not keep pace with the mobile era. There were delays in improving voice and video chat, the smartphone app arrived late, and WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger made it irrelevant.
After 2007, when the smartphone revolution came, the world was moving towards mobile. Facebook and Google were working completely on mobile-first strategy, but Yahoo was still thinking like a web portal at that time. Leadership in Yahoo company continued to be unstable. 7 CEOs were changed in 10 years. Every new CEO took a new direction, but no one was able to provide a sustainable strategy.
Acquisitions ruined the fleet
Yahoo bought more than 100 companies. Most of them were loss-making deals for him. Acquisitions like Tumblr caused huge losses to the company. Tumblr was bought by Yahoo for $1.1 billion. After a few years its price remained only 3 million dollars.
Data breach gave a shock
The biggest blow was given by the huge data breach of 2013–14, when the data of more than 3 billion users was hacked. This was the biggest theft in history. After this, Yahoo’s reputation fell and a large number of users moved towards Gmail.
Apollo Global Management becomes Yahoo in 2021
In 2021, Apollo Global Management bought 90% of Yahoo and rebranded the company Yahoo. Today Yahoo exists as a media and digital services company, which has more than 900 million monthly users. Yahoo Finance and Yahoo News are still strong in their category. Yet it is clear that Yahoo is far from its golden days. In front of Google, Facebook, TikTok and other new companies, it could not retain the shine it once had.
