Yahoo! and SoftBank formed Yahoo! Japan in January 1996 to set up the first web portal in Japan. Yahoo! Japan went live on April 1, 1996. Yahoo! Japan was listed on JASDAQ in November 1997. In January 2000, it became the first stock in Japanese history to trade for more than ¥100 million per share. The company was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in October 2003 and became part of the Nikkei 225stock market index in 2005. Yahoo! Japan acquired the naming rights for the Fukuoka Dome in 2005, renaming the dome as the "Fukuoka Yahoo! Japan Dome". The "Yahoo Dome" is the home field for the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, a professional baseball team majority owned by SoftBank. Since 2010, Yahoo! Japan's search engine has been based on Google's search technology. In exchange, Google receives user activity data from Yahoo! Japan's various products. In 2017, Verizon Communications purchased the core internet business of America-based Yahoo!, and merged them into Oath, Inc. Yahoo! Japan was not affected. It continued as a joint venture between Softbank and what remained of Yahoo! Inc., renamed Altaba. Yahoo! had been declining in popularity and economically since the late 2000s, but the situation has been quite the opposite for Yahoo! Japan, which continues to dominate Japan's internet industry. Following the sale, Yahoo! Japan will continue to use the name "Yahoo!" under license from Verizon Communications. In July 2018, SoftBank bought $2 billion worth of shares in Yahoo! Japan from Altaba, increasing its stake to 48.17 percent. Yahoo! Japan, in turn, bought nearly the same amount of stock from SoftBank. In September 2018, Altaba sold all of its remaining shares in Yahoo! Japan for roughly $4.3 billion.
Industry body affiliation
Yahoo! Japan was a founding member of Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani's Japan e-business association in February 2010, but after Rakuten withdrew from the Japan Business Federation in June 2011 and made moves to become the Japan Association of New Economy as a rival to Keidanren, Yahoo! Japan withdrew from the e-business association in March 2012. It joined Keidanren in July 2012.
Design
Yahoo! Japan continues to use the site design and logo used by Yahoo! internationally prior to 2009.
Search Engine
One of Yahoo! JAPAN's main businesses. Originally it was mainly a directory-type search engine like Yahoo! in the United States, and a crawler-type search engine was attached to it, but because the use of a crawler-type search engine gradually increased, after October 3, 2005 It switched to use a crawler-type engine as the subject. On June 29, 2017, Yahoo! Japan announced that the directory-based search engine "Yahoo! Category", which has been in operation since its establishment, will be abolished on March 29, 2018. As a crawler type search engine, initially using the search engine of goo, using Google's engine from May 2000, then switched to Yahoo Search Technology which is an engine originally developed by Yahoo! in the US. In addition to regular search engines, it has partnered with Twitter to provide real-time search for tweets. It also receives data feeds from partner companies, and COOKPAD and NAVER information is displayed in search results. "Yahoo! Search Custom Search" was discontinued on March 31, 2019
Services
Yahoo! Japan Mail
Yahoo! Japan Mail maintains the classic look of Yahoo! Mail, but remains a separate service operated in Japan. Another notable change is the 10 GB storage limit, in contrast to Yahoo! Mail's 1 TB of storage and its former unlimited-storage offering.
Japan's largest internet auction service provided by Yahoo! Japan's auction site boasts an overwhelming number of users. In the past, Yahoo! Auctions was abbreviated as Yafuoku. Now Yahoo! Auctions is now known as Yahoo! Auctions, but now Yafuoku! Is the official name. eBay appeared into Japan in 2001, but did not compete with Yahoo! Japan which was ahead of it.
Yahoo! Shopping
A store website like Rakuten.
Yahoo! Travel
Sales site for travel products.
Yahoo! Roko
A new service created in June 2011 by integrating Yahoo! Map, Yahoo! Gourmet, Yahoo! Route Information, and more. It is a service that combines map information and regional information, and Yahoo! calls it "the largest geoservice in Japan."
GyaO
GyaO is a Japanese video on demand service by Yahoo! Japan. Programs include:
