What does it mean to hold 40% of Ali's shares? Alibaba's current market value is about 1.8 trillion yuan, 40% or 720 billion yuan, which is 20 billion yuan more than Alibaba's five-year profit in 2021. This idea is a bit exaggerated, but there is really a company that owns 40% of Ali, and this company is Yahoo, An early investor of Alibaba.
For many early Internet users, Yahoo is not unfamiliar, even the Internet enlightenment website. However, it is such an Internet giant that once held 40% of Ali's shares, but gradually declined in the wave of Internet development, and even from a market value of 100 billion to bankruptcy and cheap selling, Yahoo recently announced that it will stop mailbox services in Chinese mainland. It also means that the site, which has been in China for nearly 23 years, has completely withdrawn from Chinese mainland.
The pioneer of the free model, the market capitalization was once as high as $125 billion
The Internet was born in 1969, and Yahoo was founded in 1994, and during these 25 years, the Internet can be said to be synonymous with expensive, and each website costs from registration to visit. Now we can easily search for the information we want on Baidu, in that era, it can be said to be whimsical, many people may not imagine, at that time the search was a pay-per-view fee, Yang Zhiyuan founded Yahoo.
In 1994, Yahoo Internet Navigation was born, which is also the earliest portal of the Internet, but also because of Yahoo, and later there were domestic Sina and NetEase. Just a few years after yahoo was founded, it became a myth in the Internet industry, with 235 million visits a day, the company's market value rushing to a high of $39 billion, founder Jerry Yang's personal wealth was also $7.5 billion, and in 2000, Yahoo's market value was even as high as $125 billion.
Yahoo's most important significance for the Internet is to create a "free model", Yahoo can be said to have not charged a penny with users, the income is obtained from various advertisements, such a model has been verified to be the best way to develop the Internet. For example, Douyin, Google, Facebook, etc. have all followed such business models and have become giants in the Internet industry one by one. However, compared to Yahoo's myth on the Internet, it can be said to be dizzy in terms of investment.
Missed Google and Facebook, once held 40% of Ali's shares
One of the most influential internet giants abroad is Google and the other is Facebook. As early as 1998, Google founder Larry Page wanted to sell the web crawler project to Yahoo for only $1 million, but Yahoo refused, just cooperating with Google for search. Later, when Yahoo wanted to buy it, Google raised the price to $5 billion, but Yahoo once again chose to give up. Today, Google's market capitalization has reached $1.78 trillion.
In 2006, Yahoo had the opportunity to acquire Facebook, and the merger was only one step away, but Yahoo wanted to reduce the price from the original $1 billion to $850 million, because Facebook's revenue was not satisfactory. There is no doubt that this acquisition did not end under Yahoo's reversal. Facebook is now worth $572.9 billion. These operations of Yahoo had to make people think that Tencent also wanted to sell QQ to Sohu and Sina, and finally these two latter were also unsightly, so that Tencent had its current status.
Fortunately, in 1996, Son Zhengyi had already invested $100 million in Yahoo, so in 2005, when Alibaba raised funds, Yahoo invested $1 billion plus all the assets of Yahoo China and got 40% of Alibaba's common stock. It is hard to imagine that without Son Zhengyi, Yahoo would be able to grasp Ali's investment this time?
Rejected Microsoft's 44.6 billion acquisition, but sold it for 4.8 billion
Grasping Ali does not mean that Yahoo will be able to go smoothly after that. The development of the Internet far beyond everyone's imagination, after Google became a search master, Yahoo's search business plummeted, the portal was gradually replaced by Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites, if you want to say what Yahoo has, then there is probably only one mailbox business left. Since the development is declining, selling a good value may be a good ending for Yahoo.
However, in 2009, Microsoft offered $44.6 billion to buy Yahoo, but Yahoo rejected it, and in less than three years, Yahoo's market value fell to $14 billion. It wasn't until 2016 that Yahoo finally couldn't hold out and declared bankruptcy, eventually selling itself for $4.83 billion. Whether it is relative to the previous market value or Microsoft's opening price, this is a bargain.
Over the years, Yahoo has actually been retreating, and Yahoo China, which is in Ali's hands, was shut down as early as last November. The current suspension of mailbox services in Chinese mainland means that Yahoo has completely withdrawn from Chinese mainland. Yahoo has been bright in the history of the Internet, but at the moment, it has dimmed.