User:DanNBreeden

Yahoo Small Business

Yahoo Small Business Type of site Business Owner 	Oath Website 	smallbusiness.yahoo.com Launched 	August 20, 1998; 19 years ago[1] (as Yahoo! Small Business)

Yahoo Small Business is a company located in Sunnyvale, California, and offers a full range of small business services consisting of ecommerce, web hosting, domains, advertising, and local marketing.

Contents

1 History 2 Recent years 3 Philanthropy 4 References 5 External links

History

In 1998, Yahoo! acquired Viaweb, makers of a web-based application that allowed users to build and host their own online stores with little technical expertise. Viaweb was purchased for 455,000 shares of Yahoo! stock, valued at about $49 million. Started in 1995 by Paul Graham, Robert Morris, and Trevor Blackwell,[2] Viaweb was claimed to be the world’s first ecommerce application. Upon acquisition, Yahoo! renamed the Viaweb product to Yahoo! Store.[3][4]

In 1999, Yahoo acquired web hosting service, GeoCities,[5] which was added to the Small Business portfolio. In addition to ecommerce and hosting, customers could also purchase simple domain names. And, powered by the popular and reliable Yahoo! Mail service, business email was added as both a standalone service and as a feature of website and store building packages. Since then, the company has serviced over one million subscribers. Its online retailers have processed over 300 million transactions worth over $68 billion in sales through the ecommerce platform.[6]

In July 2013 the company acquired ecommerce application platform, Lexity. Lexity was integrated into the company as Yahoo! Commerce Central, offering applications for online merchants using a variety of ecommerce platforms. Recent years

In early 2015, it was announced that Yahoo Small Business would be a part of a spin-off transaction of Yahoo!’s 40 billion shares in Chinese retailer, Alibaba.[7] The Yahoo Small Business product line was renamed Luminate, from Aabaco Small Business in preparation for the spin-off. In November 2015, Yahoo decided to no longer use the Luminate brand for its product line, and instead use Aabaco Small Business as the brand to more closely align with the then to-be parent company, Aabaco Holdings.[8] In December 2015, Yahoo ultimately decided to postpone the spin-off transaction, with Aabaco Small Business remaining a part of Yahoo.[9] On August 31, 2017, Sri Rajan, Director of Product posted an announcement that following Verizon Communications’ acquisition of Yahoo, the unit that had briefly operated as Aabaco Small Business was changing their branding back to Yahoo Small Business[10]. Philanthropy

Following Hurricane Katrina, the Yahoo Small Business team partnered with BellSouth to help businesses in the Gulf Coast area setup an online presence. On April 7, 2006 the Small Business team traveled to New Orleans to train and advise small business owners on website and ecommerce development.[11] Silk Road Collection, a New Orleans-based antique shop reported a 23% increase in sales after receiving assistance from the Small Business team during this time.[12] [13]