12 Things You Didn't Know About Yahoo, a Giant That Once Ruled the Internet

Among the best-known names on the Internet, Yahoo was one of the first companies that enabled users to find their way online, but has lost its role as a leader.

On Monday, Yahoo agreed to sell its core Internet operations to telecom giant Verizon for $4.8 billion, capping a long decline from when it had a peak market value of some $125 billion in 2000.

Here are key facts about Yahoo:

1. Founded in 1994 by Stanford University students David Filo and Jerry Yang, Yahoo was created as a type of directory for the Internet. It was originally called "Jerry and Dave's Guide to the World Wide Web" and when the Yahoo name was agreed upon, its founders said in jest that it stood for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle."

2. Its initial public offering in 1996 was the largest for a tech startup at the time.

3. Based in Sunnyvale, California, Yahoo has offices around the world and was for years the leading "portal" for the Internet, with a home page that allowed users to click on categories such as sports, finance and movies, or search for information.

4. It employed 11,700 people. Marissa Mayer was named chief executive in July 2012 but has been cutting staff significantly. As of March 31, its employee count was estimated at 9,400 and falling.

5. Yahoo was once the leading search engine for the Internet but it has been overtaken by Google, which launched in 1998.

6. According to data compiled by Netmarketshare, Yahoo handles just 7.7 percent of global online searches compared with 70 percent for Google and 11 percent for Microsoft's Bing.

7. For online advertising, Yahoo is only expected to take 1.5 percent of the worldwide digital advertising market this year, down from 2.1 percent in 2015, according to eMarketer.

8. With its Web portal, Yahoo remains an important online destination for email, messaging, news, and video. It gets 204 million regular visitors in the United States, according to comScore, which ranks it as the third-largest digital media property in the US.

9. In October, Yahoo became the first online service to stream a regular season NFL American football match, getting 15 million viewers.

10. Yahoo's finances have been skewed by its stake in China's Alibaba. It bought a 40 percent stake in Alibaba in 2005 for $1 billion and its current holding is now worth some $30 billion - the vast majority of Yahoo's market value of around $37 billion. It also holds a multibillion-dollar stake in Yahoo Japan. These holdings will not be transferred to Verizon but remain in a separate entity.

11. In 2013, Yahoo moved to attract a younger audience by buying the online blogging platform Tumblr for $1 billion.

12. Yahoo posted a loss of $4.4 billion for 2015, and in its most recent quarter lost another $440 million, having to write down the value of much of its assets. Revenues for 2015 were $4.9 billion.