MICROSOFT-YAHOO MERGER

Microsoft-Yahoo Merger

Microsoft-Yahoo Merger

Yahoo! was founded in 1994, incorporated in 1995, and is based in Sunnyvale, California. This company was founded by two Stanford students, David Filo and Jerry Yang; first being called “Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web”. (Yahoo.com, 2008) The exclamation mark was added to get trademark rights. Yahoo! was started to amuse the two college graduate students; they wanted to have fun.

Yahoo! is mainly an internet portal. In a short span of time, Yahoo! has become a massive messaging and chat center of the world, especially internationally. Yahoo! is the chat and information center for most of the world. The United States of America is the only country that Yahoo! is not #1, second to only Google.

Yahoo! is the number one visited website worldwide and the second most popular in the United States. Over the years, Yahoo! has acquired Four11, ClassicGames, Yoyodyne Entertainment, Inc., GeoCities, eGroups, Konfabulator, Overture Services, Inc., AltaVista, AlltheWeb, Web 2.0, Flickr, blo.gs, del.icio.us, and webjay (plus, many others). (yahoo.com, 2008)Yahoo! was growing very fast. Now they were no longer just an internet portal, but there was Yahoo! Games, Yahoo! Chat, Yahoo! Messenger, and many more. Yahoo! was thought to be just like bubblegum music; a one hit wonder of the internet. That just was not the case. Yahoo! showed that it was the company to beat. In most places around the world, it still is. In 2000, Yahoo! broke a record in Japan's Stock Exchange. The Price of a single share of Yahoo! stock hit 101.4 Million Yen, which is $96,110 in the US. (Auckerman, 2000) Yahoo! was taken to the House of Foreign Affairs, (a US court) by a Human Rights Group, because of crimes against Human Rights Laws. Yahoo! turned over names and materials and emails of two Chinese activists, which wrote anonymous. Yahoo! claimed that they were under obligations to follow the local laws and should not and could not just decide what information they should hand over and what information they should not.

Yahoo! being in the business of freedom of writing, publishing and knowledge in their internet business was found to be inhumane for handing over the emails to the Chinese government. The House of Foreign Affairs said that Yahoo! was deceptive and negligent in their actions. Legal proceedings are still pending, seeing there were many others that were arrested due to these emails. (Anderson, 2007) Yahoo! has and is suffering from their actions of handing the emails over to the Chinese Government. Yahoo! might have been wrong morally and legally by US laws, but they have a business in China and are bound in that country for following their rules. It does seem, thought, that Yahoo! gets to pick and choose what laws and customs they will follow in Asian countries. Yahoo! was looked down upon by Japan for having medicines and other things made with shark on their advertisements in Japan's Yahoo!. Yahoo! responded by saying it is custom, but there have been other facts shown ...