Talk:Yahoo!/Archive 3

Streamline History section
Hi All, Spencer from Yahoo here. I was exploring Wikipedia and reading different Yahoo articles. I discovered there is an excess of duplicate, redundant information in both of the Yahoo! and Yahoo! Inc. (1995-2017) articles. I summarized the History section and removed the redundant word-for-word content. I also removed content that focused on the company itself, since this Yahoo article is on the web portal. This is a large edit request with complete rewrite of the History section. I am sharing the section in its entirety, so editors can fully see what I am proposing. However, should editors want to consider this in smaller chunks, I am happy to post in smaller edit requests. Just let me know! What I propose is below.

History

File:Yahoo screenshot 1994.png

In 1994, Stanford University graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo created "Jerry and David's guide to the World Wide Web", a hierarchical human edited web directory. In 1995 the website became known as the Yahoo Directory, and was registered as domain Yahoo.com January 18, 1995.

The name of the site is a backronym for "Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle" or "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle". The term "hierarchical" described how the Yahoo database was arranged in layers of subcategories. The term "oracle" was intended to mean "source of truth and wisdom", and the term "officious", rather than being related to the word's normal meaning, described the many office workers who would use the Yahoo database while surfing from work. Moreso, Yang and Filo liked the definition of "yahoo": "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth."

Yahoo was incorporated on March 2, 1995. In 1995, Yahoo introduced its search engine function, called Yahoo Search, which allowed users to search Yahoo Directory. Yahoo soon became the first popular online directory and search engine on the World Wide Web.

Yahoo grew rapidly throughout the 1990s. Yahoo became a public company via an initial public offering in April 1996 and its stock price rose 600% within two years. Yahoo was the first online directory to add news, sports and finance feeds, along with user customizations and location specific directories.

Like many search engines and web directories, Yahoo added a web portal, putting it in competition with services including Excite, Lycos, and America Online. By 1998, Yahoo was the most popular starting point for web users, and the human-edited Yahoo Directory the most popular search engine, receiving 95 million page views per day, triple that of rival Excite. It also made many high-profile acquisitions. Yahoo began offering free e-mail from October 1997 after the acquisition of RocketMail, which was then renamed to Yahoo Mail. In 1998, Yahoo replaced AltaVista as the crawler-based search engine underlying the Directory with Inktomi. Yahoo had added an online magazine and "Yahooligans" a child friendly search function. Simultaneously, Yahoo grew with added online categories of shopping, classifieds, games, chat rooms, personals, weather, maps and travel. Yahoo strategically built additional Internet features such as Yahoo Briefcase (cloud storage), Yahoo TV, Flickr, Yahoo Notebook and Yahoo Music.

Yahoo's two biggest acquisitions were made in 1999: Geocities for $3.6 billion and Broadcast.com for $5.7 billion.

In 2000 Yahoo began using Google's search function. In 2002 Yahoo acquired Inktomi for $280 million and in 2004 developed Yahoo Search Technology. In the early 2000s, Yahoo began offering joint broadband Internet service with major telecommunications providers, such as SBC Communications, Verizon Communications, and BT Group.

In response to Google's Gmail, Yahoo began to offer unlimited email storage in 2007.

Microsoft unsuccessfully attempted to acquire Yahoo in 2008 with a $44.8 billion unsolicited bid. Although Microsoft increased its bid to $47 billion, Yahoo insisted on another 10%+ increase to the offer and Microsoft cancelled the offer in May 2008.

In July 2013 Yahoo had more web traffic than Google according to Comscore, the first time that Yahoo outperformed Google since 2011.

Katie Couric joined Yahoo in 2013 as the global anchor for Yahoo News. Couric, whose interviews generated nearly 1 billion views, left Yahoo in 2017.

On December 12, 2014, Yahoo acquired video advertising provider BrightRoll for $583 million.

On November 21, 2014, Yahoo acquired Cooliris.

By December 2015, the company's performance declined amid competition, and the company was in talks to sell its Internet business. Despite efforts to buy up talent and start-ups and increasing its mobile business, high-profile strategic moves, such as Yahoo's $1.1 billion acquisition Tumblr and Yahoo's initiatives to create original video content, along with key hires, did not generate the kinds of growth Yahoo expected. On February 2, 2016, Marissa Mayer, who was CEO at the time, announced layoffs amounting to 15% of the Yahoo! workforce.

Verizon Communications began the purchase of Yahoo's core Internet business for $4.83 billion in July 2016. On February 21, 2017, Verizon reduced its offer by $350 million as a result of the Yahoo data breaches. On June 13, 2017, Verizon completed the acquisition of Yahoo. The Yahoo assets were consolidated in a subsidiary called Oath, which was later renamed to Verizon Media.

In September 2021, investment funds managed by private equity firm Apollo Global Management acquired 90% of Verizon Media, with Verizon retaining a 10% stake. Verizon Media was renamed Yahoo Inc.

Please edit as you see fit. I recommend keeping the Chief executive officers subsection in History, but I did not include it here so reviewing editors could focus on the content I am seeking to update. A reminder that I have a COI, so I am posting the request to the talk page. Are you interested in reviewing? Thanks for your help! Spencer at Yahoo (talk) 18:45, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Infobox and top sentence
The Infobox is outdated. I also wonder if the "about" sentence at the very top of the page can be updated to include a link to Yahoo's current parent company. I broke down the requests below and put together some sourcing to support.

Infobox: There are a few areas in the Infobox that are in need of updates.


 * 1) The type of site section says "web portal". Yahoo has a deep history as a search engine and web portal, but that description seems outdated as now Yahoo offers more to users. For example: Yahoo Sports, Yahoo News, Yahoo Email and so on. Please update this area to read "web portal and online services"
 * 2) There are several Yahoo services that have their own pages. The current Infobox has a link to a list of products in the products area. Instead of having a link, could we list some of the services that have a Wikipedia page? Since the infobox offers readers a quick glance of important information, it seems that a link to another page is counterintuitive
 * 3) The revenue section source is from 2017. Here is a link to |to a current source, with a reported 2020 revenue number of 7.4 billion.
 * 4) Update the name of Yahoo! Native to its new name, Yahoo Ad Tech Source)
 * 5) I think the parent area is confusing if the reader isn't familiar with Yahoo's history. I propose changing the parent list to include the name and year. In chronological order. Something similar to:
 * Yahoo! Inc. (1995–2017)
 * Oath (2017–2019)
 * Verizon Media (2019–2021)
 * Yahoo (2021–present)

You can see my proposed Infobox at right.

"This article is about…": Would it be possible to include Yahoo's parent company Yahoo (2017-present) in this sentence at the very top of the article? It gives further clarity for the reader. The Yahoo (2017-present) has a similar note that distinguishes the Yahoo pages, since there are multiple. Perhaps something like that?

I am proposing an edit request for review. I have a COI, so I am posting the request to the talk page. Thanks for your help! Spencer at Yahoo (talk) 17:14, 3 March 2022 (UTC)


 * . –– FormalDude  talk  22:41, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
 * saw your request at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Companies. I agree with your requested update to "Parent" (#5) so I've updated that property, though I formatted it slightly differently. Let me know if you have concerns about the way it's now presented. I've not implemented #2 or #4, however. See feedback below.
 * ✅ by FormalDude.
 * as this would bloat the infobox with excessive detail and the list link already gives easy access to products. However, feel free to raise as a separate edit request to get input from other editors.
 * ✅ by FormalDude.
 * , need reliable third-party sources (WP:RS) for this change. The Yahoo! Native article should also be updated/renamed if its name has changed so ideally sources provided should be sufficient to justify those edits as well. Please raise as a separate edit request with sources.
 * ✅ by FormalDude (requested update to "about" hatnote).
 * Feel free to ping me on a new request for #4 if you've tracked down sources. -- DatraxMada (talk) 15:57, 22 March 2022 (UTC); edited DatraxMada (talk) 16:48, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅ by FormalDude.
 * , need reliable third-party sources (WP:RS) for this change. The Yahoo! Native article should also be updated/renamed if its name has changed so ideally sources provided should be sufficient to justify those edits as well. Please raise as a separate edit request with sources.
 * ✅ by FormalDude (requested update to "about" hatnote).
 * Feel free to ping me on a new request for #4 if you've tracked down sources. -- DatraxMada (talk) 15:57, 22 March 2022 (UTC); edited DatraxMada (talk) 16:48, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Feel free to ping me on a new request for #4 if you've tracked down sources. -- DatraxMada (talk) 15:57, 22 March 2022 (UTC); edited DatraxMada (talk) 16:48, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the help and the explanations. I really appreciate your time and expertise. Spencer at Yahoo (talk) 19:44, 23 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Here are a few sources that mention Yahoo Ad Tech.  Thanks for reviewing! Spencer at Yahoo (talk) 20:09, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks, the Ad Week mention is enough to show that "Yahoo! Ad Tech" is the current name of the advertising provider. Updated. DatraxMada (talk) 17:21, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Remove duplicate content
Hi All, Spencer from Yahoo here. I was exploring different Yahoo articles across Wikipedia and noted excessive duplicate content from the Yahoo!_Inc._(1995–2017) company article and the Yahoo! article. The Logos and Themes section contains a great deal of word for word copy and the majority of the images throughout both articles are duplicates. Would an editor or editors consider removing the Logos and Themes section from the Yahoo! article. If editors feel the images from the section should remain, please distribute throughout the article. My goal is to streamline the article for readability.

A reminder that I have a COI, so I am posting the request to the talk page. Thank you for reading and let me know what you think. Spencer at Yahoo (talk) 16:12, 21 April 2022 (UTC)


 * I'm thinking it might be better to WP:MERGE, let me know what you think. ★Ama   TALK   CONTRIBS  01:25, 26 April 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the suggestion. Merging the articles might be a solid option, thanks for bringing it up. However, there are many Yahoo articles on Wikipedia, so which article specifically would you recommend for the merge with the Yahoo article? Due to Yahoo's massive history and presence as both a corporate entity and a web portal, do you think merging articles would result in "too" long or clunky material, making it difficult to navigate for readers? Since Yahoo the web portal and Yahoo the original corporate entity are both independently notable, it may make sense to keep articles about both of them, similar to how Wikipedia also has an article about the existing business entity, Yahoo Inc. That is why I proposed just a deletion of the duplicate content from this article, it seemed easier for a novice Wikipedia user (like me)! Thanks for explaining and your help, Spencer at Yahoo (talk) 14:13, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Yeah I think you're right, merging the company and the web portal doesn't seem like a good idea. Maybe certain sections could be ported over instead so that there's no duplicates and such. Might need some general WP:CLEANUP also. ★Ama   TALK   CONTRIBS  15:34, 27 April 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the quick reply. I agree, I think that the article could use a cleanup, some updating and removal of redundant material. There is another open edit request if you are interested in reviewing found here which also addresses duplicate content. Back to the Logos and themes section, what do you think about just removing the section since the material is largely a copy from the Yahoo!_Inc._(1995–2017) article. Due to my COI I am unable to edit the article, and I will rely on your expertise. Spencer at Yahoo (talk) 15:26, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I've changed the template signifying that you can make the suggested edit yourself. Thanks for abiding to the COI guidelines. ★Ama   TALK   CONTRIBS  15:44, 28 April 2022 (UTC)


 * While I appreciate your permission, due to my COI and to the sensitive nature of COI edits, I would prefer a user that is not associated with Yahoo edit the article. Would you reconsider removing the duplicate content in the Logos and themes section? If you are not available, I have reopened the request. Spencer at Yahoo (talk) 20:17, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Granting permission to the request of COI edit is effectively the same as me editing it myself, since I basically gave you the permission. So if you get permission you're free to do it without risk of violating COI policy. Having said that, sure, I can try to implement it.
 * ★Ama  TALK   CONTRIBS  20:46, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅ Removed duplicate content and added anchored redirect links to the past logos with a reflink to the new logo (the Yahoo (2017-present) article)
 * I hope this properly addresses your wishes, although I added a bit to it with the redirect links. Just making sure people can still find the stuff they want to find! ★Ama   TALK   CONTRIBS  21:17, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 August 2022
This page includes the "Yahoo!" infobox, but then also includes the "Yahoo, Inc." infobox, which itself includes the "Yahoo!" infobox, making the first inclusion redundant; I believe the first inclusion should be removed.

Also, the "Yahoo, Inc." infobox is still being referred to as the "Verizon Media" infobox in the source; I believe this should be changed. 108.24.202.139 (talk) 22:45, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
 * There is only one infobox in the article. Perhaps its already been fixed.  Otherwise, please clarify what change you're asking for.  RudolfRed (talk) 03:30, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Map Update
The map displaying which countries have localized versions of Yahoo! is from 2008 and needs to be replaced. Last month, I made a new version of the map but never got around to making an edit request until now. In the source code, the line



should be changed to



which will change the picture from the one marked "Old image (2008)" to the one marked "New image (2022)" below.





ConnerMiner (talk) 03:56, 15 August 2022 (UTC)


 * UPDATE: Just now realized I'm able to add it myself. ConnerMiner (talk) 19:58, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

American web services
Where they based 95.44.225.27 (talk) 13:56, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Wouldn't Apollo Management group count as the parent company?
After looking at this page for a while I've noticed that Apollo holds on to 90% of Yahoo. So wouldn't it technically count as the parent company? To become a parent company, the business has to aquire at least 51% of another companies common stock. I don't know if it counts towards subsidiaries, but maybe Apollo is the parent company to Yahoo? Maybe? WiinterU (talk) 13:40, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Q
Q 5.193.132.213 (talk) 13:31, 4 October 2022 (UTC)


 * I always wondered what happened to Q since Star Trek: The Next Generation finished… He's posting Talk messages! – AndyFielding (talk) 13:37, 6 September 2023 (UTC)