Description
Yahoo! News is a news website that originated as an internet-based news aggregator by Yahoo!. The site was created by a Yahoo! software engineer named Brad Clawsie in August 1996. Articles originally came from news services such as the Associated Press, Reuters, Fox News, Al Jazeera, ABC News, USA Today, CNN and BBC News.
In 2001, Yahoo! News launched the first "most-emailed" page on the web. It was well-received as an innovative idea, expanding people's understanding of the impact that online news sources have on news consumption. Yahoo allowed comments for news articles until December 19, 2006, when commentary was disabled. Comments were re-enabled on March 2, 2010.
By 2011, Yahoo had expanded its focus to include original content, as part of its plans to become a major media organization. Veteran journalists (including Walter Shapiro and Virginia Heffernan) were hired, while the website had a correspondent in the White House press corps for the first time in February 2012. An Amazon-owned marketing data collection company (Amazon Alexa) claimed Yahoo! News one of the world's top news sites, at this point. Plans were made to add a Twitter feed. In November, 2013, Yahoo hired former Today Show and CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric as Global Anchor of Yahoo! News. She left in 2017.
On May 3, 2021, Verizon announced that the Verizon Media would be acquired by Apollo Global Management for roughly $5 billion, and would simply be known as Yahoo following the closure of the deal, with Verizon retaining a minor 10% stake in the new group. The deal was closed on September 1, 2021.