Yahoo Was an Internet Giant Back in the 1990s and Early 2000s but Then It Started Fading

Yahoo was an internet giant back in the 1990s and early 2000s but then it started fading , here’s why.

In the year 2000 Yahoo had a market value of about $130 Billion. They hired Google to power their search engine results In the same year but later on in 2004 they decided to replace Google as their search engine provider and they aimed at challenging their  leadership in the internet search ( which turned out to be a bad idea). Yahoo sold all of its Google stock for just $1.4 Billion (The number quadrupled since they sold them). In 2008, Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo for $47 Billion but they demanded more money and Microsoft declined the offer.

Finally in 2016 they started laying off 15 % of their workforce and later on the same year Yahoo rolled into Verizon’s AOL operations for just $4.83 Billion. The reason that the brand declined the way it did is because of the many mistakes made by the company’s board , poor management and the lack of foresight.

To revitalize the brand , maybe they could have gone back to their roots to recapture lost sources of equity or completely reinvent which usually requires change in all 4P’s.Also, they could expand the brand awareness , improve their image or even enter new markets because the consumers tend to think of the brand only in a very narrow way. Also , bring back old positive associations and created new positive associations and PODs and neutralize the negative ones, in addition to updating the brand elements like the logo and symbol in order to signal that the brand has taken on new meaning.

Finally , they can involve the customers more because that’s the most efficient way to find out which areas you need work on but it also makes your efforts visible to the customers.