Headquarters of Yahoo! Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif.
© Andreistanescu/Dreamstime.com
Yahoo!, global Internet brand and services provider based in Sunnyvale, California, and owned by Verizon Communications since 2017. It was founded in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo, graduate students at Stanford University in California. Yahoo! provides users with online utilities, information, and access to other websites.
Yahoo!, which includes features such as a search engine, an e-mail service, a directory, and a news branch, began as a simple collection of Yang and Filo’s favourite Web sites. It was initially called “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web,” but, as the site grew in popularity, it was renamed Yahoo!, an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.” Incorporated in 1995, Yahoo! acquired various companies such as Rocketmail and ClassicGames.com, which eventually became Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Games, respectively. As one of the major players in the dot-com frenzy of the late 1990s, Yahoo! managed to survive the collapse of many Internet-based companies in 2001–02, but it sustained heavy economic losses.
Yahoo! battled Google—a major competitor in the search engine industry—for many years in an attempt to claim a larger share of the market. Yahoo! notably released its Yahoo! Instant Messenger, bought out the Internet photo network Flickr, included a myriad of other features, and acquired a 40 percent share of the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba. Despite such moves, many of Yahoo!’s rivals endured. In February 2008 the Microsoft Corporation offered to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 billion, but this proposal was rejected by Yahoo!, and Microsoft then rescinded its offer. However, negotiations between the companies continued, and on July 28, 2009, an agreement was reached in which Yahoo! would use Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, for its Web site and would handle premium advertisem*nts for Microsoft’s Web site, an arrangement scheduled to last for 10 years.
Amid growing financial struggles, Yahoo! hired Marissa Mayer as CEO and president in 2012. Although she had played a key role in the rise of Google, her efforts to turn Yahoo! around had little success. In 2016 it was announced that Verizon Communications would acquire the company’s core assets, notably its Internet operations, for approximately $4.8 billion. However, the closing of the deal was delayed by the public announcement that Yahoo! had been subjected to a series of security breaches, which was said to have affected more than one billion user accounts; it was later revealed that all Yahoo! accounts (approximately three billion) had been compromised. The final sale, which was completed in 2017, was valued at approximately $4.48 billion. Yahoo! subsequently became part of the newly created subsidiary Oath, though it continued to exist as a distinct brand. The portion of Yahoo! that was not sold—notably its interest in Alibaba—was reformed as Altaba.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.
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What is the oldest form of money? ›
The shekel was the unit of weight and currency, first recorded c. 2150 BC, which was nominally equivalent to a specific weight of barley that was the preexisting and parallel form of currency.
What are four types of money? ›
Different 4 types of money
- Fiat money – the notes and coins backed by a government.
- Commodity money – a good that has an agreed value.
- Fiduciary money – money that takes its value from a trust or promise of payment.
- Commercial bank money – credit and loans used in the banking system.
In standard economic theory, money is held to have four functions: to serve as a medium of exchange universally accepted in return for goods and services; to act as a measure of value, making possible the operation of the price system and the calculation of cost, profit, and loss; to serve as a standard of deferred ...
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It is widely believed the Mesopotamian shekel was the first known form of physical currency. Since then, societies have used many different representations for currency including leather, fur, beads, copper and precious metals like gold and silver.
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Nineteen European nations use the euro as their official currency. It is the youngest currency. There are about 25 countries that tie their currencies to the euro, even though the euro is not pegged with any other currency.
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The Four Fundamental Rules of Personal Finance
Spend less than you make. Spend way less than you make, and save the rest. Earn more money. Make your money earn more money.
1. Animal money: in protohistoric period 'animal money' was used as a means of exchange, e.g. cow sheep goat etc. however due to their indivisible nature, commodity money came into existence.
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Cash and Cash Equivalents
Cash is the most liquid asset possible as it is already in the form of money. This includes physical cash, savings account balances, and checking account balances.
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Historians generally agree that the Lydians were the first to make coins. However, in recent years, Chinese archaeologists have uncovered evidence of a coin production mint located in China's Henan Province thought to date to 640 B.C. In 600 B.C., Lydia began minting coins widely used for trading.
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Before the creation of money, exchange took place in the form of barter, where people traded to get the goods and services they wanted. Two people, each having something the other wanted, would agree to trade one another. In economics, we call this a double coincidence of wants.
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The first known banknote was first developed in China during the Tang and Song dynasties, starting in the 7th century. Its roots were in merchant receipts of deposit during the Tang dynasty (618–907), as merchants and wholesalers desired to avoid the heavy bulk of copper coinage in large commercial transactions.
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