Yahoo… a name as synonymous with internet history as Google or Microsoft. It’s one of those companies that has been around for so long, and played such a prolific part, that it’s forever engrained in our cultural discourse. Case and point: an article published by The Wall Street Journal on April 15th of 1996 is still available online (as of this writing) where you can read all about Yahoo’s blockbuster IPO all those years ago.
The IPO was bombastic, beating expectations. The piece called that day’s 154% gain a “honeymoon” that probably wouldn’t last. Shares had opened at $24.50 each, peaked at $43.00, and closed at $33.00. Yahoo enjoyed the ride up, and their stock would peak around the year 2000. Eventually, Verizon Communications would acquire Yahoo’s core business, with the remainder still trading under ticker (AABA).
If you had visited Yahoo’s landing page that year, you would be staring at something that looks very much the way craigslist does today… white page, single-file blue links, mostly text. No frills… just some categories, subcategories, and the most tubular header graphics CSS could muster. That humble page is a part of the origin story of something of a Goliath of the modern internet.
These days, Yahoo is formidable in the online advertising market. If you want to be seen, you want ad space on their websites and apps. Their search engine is also a household name, everyone’s used it at least once. As for email services, theirs is old enough that if you had a Hotmail account, you probably had (and still have) a Yahoo email account.
Yahoo Finance is prolific in the finance space… many amateur and pro investors rely on their special sauce of financial news, data, and analysis every day. They’ve held space for themselves in sports, and are pushing further into ventures there. Over time, Yahoo’s services, content, and personalities have only become more of an important piece of our societal dialogue.
As such… our ears perked up when we learned the company was planning another initial public offering. Yahoo leadership has been chatting with some folks pretty publicly lately, being very open about their profits, and their hopes for another IPO. It can’t be just us noticing that the 90s are coming back in style… makes us wonder who else will come out of the woodwork.
From what we understand, they’re really looking to lean into M&A activities to build business and meet coming challenges… we like it. New partnerships can sometimes unlock accidental new ventures that turn out to be something wonderful. Ever heard of Wagr? It’s a sports-betting app, and it’s the kind of thing Yahoo is dabbling in to help them stay relevant.
They also acquired online sports betting and gaming company BetMGM not too long ago. What are their plans for sports betting? CEO Jim Lanzone used the words “major player”, and noted that the company plans to use data and AI to get there. Then there’s what Yahoo is calling “Search 2.0.”, which will be AI-powered (get your coats, Bing and Google, the door is over there).
Much like what competitors are building, Yahoo’s evolved search will use AI to make searches more meaningful for users. Results will be more relevant and personalized, and will use AI to make sure the information being served up is both accurate and timely. We see this as a good thing, given how quickly information moves these days. Who can keep up? Artificial intelligence… that’s who.
If you frequented the web “back in the day”, you were part of a wave of folks who cut their teeth on Yahoo’s cool, cutting-edge features and branding tricks. Those interactions formed our expectations for interfaces to come, and (at least for us) we now secretly think of “Yahoo purple” as a color on the color wheel instead of a seed planted in our minds by advertisers… powerful.
We wonder if Yahoo can keep the momentum going. We don’t mean to be crass, but we’ve recently watched plenty of folks we once considered impressive and timeless make some backward moves. It’s like watching your idol turn out to be mannequin. We hope Yahoo keeps wowing… and maybe they’ll bring another impressive IPO… we’ll see. Come back next week, we’ll have more from the IPO space.