Yahoo Inc

Yahoo Inc. said it paid Chief Executive Terry Semel $39.8 million in compensation last year, mostly in stock options. Semel's salary was $250,001, down from $600,000 in 2005, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo said in a statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The drop resulted from Semel switching to a $1 salary from $600,000 in May 2006.

SAN FRANCISCO - To punctuate his company's $1.1-billion purchase by Yahoo Inc., Tumblr co-founder and Chief Executive David Karp let loose in a blog post with a celebratory expletive. It was classic Karp, a 26-year-old high school dropout who built one of the Web's most popular outlets for personal expression. It was also a clever way to send a message to Tumblr users: It may have been bought out - earning Karp about $275 million - but Tumblr was going to stay irreverent.

Yahoo Inc. said it bought closely held Online Anywhere, which formats Web pages for accessing by hand-held devices, for $80 million in stock. Yahoo, the leading Internet search service, said acquiring Online Anywhere will enable it to transmit its Internet-directory content to pagers, cellular phones and other portable devices. It did not disclose details of the purchase.

When Samih Toukan and Hussam Khoury started Maktoob.com as an Arabic e-mail service 10 years ago, they had a modest office in Amman, Jordan, and little support from friends and family who could not imagine anyone using the Internet in Arabic. "We were a typical start-up; I remember the day we got air conditioning we had a party," Toukan recalled. In August, Yahoo Inc. acquired Maktoob, now the largest Arabic portal, for a reported $80 million -- a milestone in the evolution of the Arabic Internet.

Upstart Internet company Yahoo Inc. now has a market value that's larger than many giants of U.S. industry, including Black & Decker, Rubbermaid and Maytag. The stock of Santa Clara-based Yahoo has risen fivefold in the last year, giving it a market capitalization of $5.25 billion. Shares soared $17.25 to close at $114.50 on Nasdaq, one day after it reported earnings that surprised even the most Internet-crazed investors.

Yahoo Inc. veteran Timothy Brady, the third employee hired by the most-used Internet search site, resigned to explore an academic career, a spokeswoman said. Brady, 33, is responsible for editorial content and how it is presented on Yahoo's Web sites. He will leave at the end of the month. Most of Brady's duties will be assumed by Geoff Ralston, senior vice president of communications.

Yahoo Inc. plans to lay off hundreds of employees in business areas not central to its new priorities as it faces rising competitive pressures, a person familiar with the matter said Monday. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company, which has seen its share of online advertising decline despite its sites being among the Internet's most visited, is still deciding where to cut.

Yahoo Inc. reported a second straight quarter of disappointing financial results Tuesday, but gave investors some hope for a rebound. The company said it had started testing a much-anticipated Web search system designed to compete against its biggest rival, Google Inc. Yahoo's shares rose as much as 5% in after-hours trading Tuesday even though the company said the new system wouldn't help its bottom line until next spring. Yahoo announced its earnings after the market closed.

SAN FRANCISCO - To punctuate his company's $1.1-billion purchase by Yahoo Inc., Tumblr co-founder and Chief Executive David Karp let loose in a blog post with a celebratory expletive. It was classic Karp, a 26-year-old high school dropout who built one of the Web's most popular outlets for personal expression. It was also a clever way to send a message to Tumblr users: It may have been bought out - earning Karp about $275 million - but Tumblr was going to stay irreverent.

* Yahoo Inc. has acquired Upcoming.org, a Los Angeles-based online event planning site that's expected to infuse the Internet powerhouse with more content about local communities.

Yahoo Inc. confirmed Tuesday that it would shut down most operations during Christmas week to save money, but experts said the holiday lull was par for the course in the Silicon Valley. The Internet company is mandating that most of its employees worldwide, except for those responsible for "essential functions" such as customer service, take off work Dec. 25 through Jan. 1. In the U.S., employees can either use vacation time or take unpaid leave. Christmas and New Year's Day will still be paid holidays.

Three powerful technology companies have banded together to oppose Google Inc.'s proposed settlement with the Authors Guild and the Assn. of American Publishers over the Internet search giant's book scanning project. Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. have signed on to a coalition being assembled by the Internet Archive and Gary Reback, a Silicon Valley antitrust lawyer, said Peter Brantley, director of the Internet Archive, a San Francisco nonprofit that is trying to build a free digital library of Internet content.

Despite an economy that has crippled consumer spending, shoppers still shelled out money for iPhones, iPod Touches and other premium products sold by Apple Inc., driving the company to post its best June quarter sales, the electronics giant said Tuesday. The recession, however, did not spare Yahoo Inc. The beleaguered Internet portal posted a 13% plunge in revenue over a year earlier as businesses continued to cut back spending on online advertising.

Yahoo Inc. said Thursday that it would shut down its GeoCities free Web-hosting service after paying about $3 billion for the unit in 1999. GeoCities isn't accepting new accounts and will close later this year, Yahoo said. GeoCities, Yahoo's second-biggest acquisition behind Broadcast.com Inc., lets users design personal websites to show off photos, promote local clubs or publicize business services.

Yahoo Inc. posted drops in revenue and profit in new Chief Executive Carol Bartz's first quarter on the job, and announced plans to cut about 675 workers from its payroll, as the tech industry showed signs of continued economic battering. Although Yahoo met analysts' estimates, its revenue fell to $1.58 billion for the first three months of 2009, down 13% from $1.82 billion a year earlier. Net income was $118.7 million, or 8 cents a share, compared with $536.

Yahoo Inc. reported a $303-million shortfall Tuesday, its first quarterly loss since 2002, as the struggling Internet company took charges to acknowledge the shrinking value of its business. Cutbacks by advertisers, especially on Web banners, hurt Yahoo's revenue, which also dropped for the first time in seven years. Eight days into her new job, Yahoo Chief Executive Carol Bartz warned analysts during a conference call that tough times would continue.

Yahoo Inc. said Cammie Dunaway was leaving as chief marketing officer, the latest executive to depart amid a reorganization of the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Internet company.

Yahoo Inc. is expanding its online music section to include the lyrics of 400,000 songs. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo is touting the free service as the Web's largest legally licensed database of lyrics. Most websites that publish lyrics technically are breaking the law by posting the words without the permission of the copyright owners.

Yahoo Inc.'s employees will forgo their usual pay raises this year as the slumping Internet company struggles to boost its profit in a brutal recession. The Sunnyvale, Calif., company confirmed the salary freeze Thursday, the day after informing employees of the decision. The austerity measure marks one of the first cost-cutting actions taken by Yahoo's new chief executive, Carol Bartz, who was hired two weeks ago to engineer a turnaround.

A few years back, Carol Bartz said that the worst thing about her job running software maker Autodesk Inc. was "when people on the outside try to second-guess everything a CEO does." As the new chief executive of beleaguered Internet company Yahoo Inc., Bartz's patience with Monday-morning quarterbacking is likely to be tested.