Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo

I just came across the news that Microsoft has offered to buy the search engine company Yahoo for $44.6bn (£22.4bn) in cash and shares. This was in the agenda in past few months, with the rise of Google. One point to note is that since both emerged, Google has been able to showcase itself as a software solution provider in many fields apart from its search engine. Even though Yahoo was started as a similar initiative, it did not keep up with the business story of Google.

Yahoo began in 1994 as a personal project by David Filo and Jerry Yang, electrical engineering students at Stanford University. Initially a simple list of interesting websites, Yahoo.com began to file these Internet links in topical categories as the list grew. Interest in Filo and Yang's list grew rapidly among their classmates, and word spread outside the university. The website was called "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web," and it rapidly developed an international following. The site was later renamed Yahoo!, an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," and in 1995 the organization attracted significant investment from the established US venture-capital firm, Sequoia Capital. The company grew quickly, going public with an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of shares in April of 1996. The initial share price was US$13, but as the boom in internet stocks took hold the price soared and reached a closing peak of US$475 per share in January 2000. A world-record share price was set later that year when a single share in Yahoo! Japan (a joint venture with a Japanese financial group) was worth over US$1.1 million. However since 2001, there has been rise and fall of its share preices, and recent months have seen more.

Still it Yahoo has continued acquiring companies to expand its range of services, particularly Web 2.0 services. Yahoo Launchcast became Yahoo Music in 2005, purchased photo sharing service Flickr and in 2007 had released new verstion of Yahoo Mail and Messenger, including the service users of Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger, to send free text messages to mobile phones in sveral countries.

2008 saw the downfall with announcement that Yahoo was planning to lay off 1000 of employees out of its work force of about 14,000. Employees are being invited to apply for an unknown number of new positions that are expected to open as the company expands areas that promise faster growth. However, with this current announcement of Microsoft tryingto buy Yahoo, this may be the end of another INTERNET GIANT !!!