History of Yahoo!
On March 8, 1997, Yahoo! acquired online communications company Four11. Four11's webmail service, Rocketmail, became Yahoo! Mail. Yahoo! also acquired ClassicGames.com and turned it into Yahoo! Games. Yahoo! then acquired direct marketing company Yoyodyne Entertainment, Inc. on October 12, 1998. In January 1999, Yahoo! acquired web hosting provider GeoCities. Another company Yahoo! took over was eGroups, which became Yahoo! Groups in June 2000. On March 8, 1998, Yahoo! launched Yahoo! Pager, an instant messaging service that was renamed Yahoo! Messenger a year later.
List of mergers and acquisitions by Yahoo!
Yahoo's first acquisition was the purchase of Net Controls, a web search engine company, in September 1997 for US$1.4 million. As of April 2008, the company's largest acquisition is the purchase of Broadcast.com, an Internet radio company, for $5.7 billion, making Broadcast.com co-founder Mark Cuban a billionaire. Most of the companies acquired by Yahoo are based in the United States; 78 of the companies are from the United States, and 15 are based in a foreign country. As of July 2015, Yahoo has acquired 114 companies, with Polyvore being the latest.