Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO)

Yahoo! Inc. was one of the defining internet companies of the 1990s and 2000s. Its web portal combined search, email, news, finance, sports and entertainment content, and it earned most of its revenue from online advertising. At its peak Yahoo was among the most visited sites in the world and one of the most valuable technology companies. It was headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Its shares traded on Nasdaq under the symbol YHOO.

Yahoo began in 1994 as a directory of websites created by Stanford graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo, and it was incorporated in 1995. The company went public on Nasdaq in April 1996 and grew rapidly during the dot-com boom. It survived the 2000-2001 crash, but it gradually lost ground in search to Google and later in social media and mobile to newer rivals. In 2008 it turned down an acquisition offer from Microsoft. A key strategic success was its 2005 investment in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, along with its stake in Yahoo Japan.

By the mid-2010s, Yahoo's stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan were worth more than its core internet business. Under chief executive Marissa Mayer the company tried to revive growth, but in 2016 it agreed to sell its operating business to Verizon Communications. The price was later reduced to about $4.48 billion after Yahoo disclosed massive data breaches affecting user accounts. Verizon completed the purchase on June 13, 2017 and combined Yahoo with AOL in a unit called Oath.

The remaining public company, which held the Alibaba and Yahoo Japan stakes and cash, changed its name to Altaba Inc. on June 16, 2017. It registered as a closed-end investment company, and its shares began trading on Nasdaq under the new ticker AABA on June 19, 2017. Altaba later sold its holdings and adopted a plan of liquidation, and its shares were delisted in October 2019. The Yahoo brand continues to operate under private ownership after Verizon sold it to Apollo funds in 2021.