Criticism of Yahoo

Yahoo! has faced significant scrutiny throughout its history regarding security, privacy, and corporate governance. The company was involved in several high-profile data breaches that affected its entire user base, alongside controversies related to its cooperation with government authorities and its handling of user data in international markets. These incidents led to numerous legal challenges, regulatory investigations, and a notable impact on the company's public reputation and valuation.

Paid inclusion controversy

In March 2004, Yahoo! launched a paid inclusion program whereby commercial websites were guaranteed listings on the Yahoo! search engine after payment.[1] This scheme was lucrative but proved unpopular both with website marketers (who were reluctant to pay), and the public (who were unhappy about the paid-for listings being indistinguishable from other search results).[2] As of October 2006, Paid Inclusion ceased to guarantee any commercial listing and only helped the paid inclusion customers, by crawling their site more often and by providing some statistics on the searches that led to the page and some additional smart links (provided by customers as feeds) below the actual URL.

Adware and spyware

Yahoo! has also been criticized for funding spyware and adware—advertising from Yahoo!'s clients often appears on-screen in pop-ups generated from adware that a user may have installed on their computer without realizing it by accepting online offers to download software to fix computer clocks or improve computer security, add browser enhancements, etc. The frequency of advertising pop-ups for spyware, generated from a partnership with advertising distributor Walnut Ventures, who had a direct partnership with Direct Revenue, could be increased or decreased based on Yahoo!'s immediate revenue needs, according to some former employees in Yahoo!'s sales department.[3][4]

Work in the People's Republic of China

Yahoo!, along with Google China, Microsoft, Cisco, AOL, Skype, Nortel and others, has cooperated with the Chinese Communist Party in implementing a system of internet censorship in mainland China.

Unlike Google or Microsoft, which generally keep confidential records of its users outside mainland China, Yahoo! stated that the company cannot protect the privacy and confidentiality of its mainland Chinese customers from the authorities.[5]

Critics say that the companies put profits before principles.[6] Human Rights Watch and

User-created chat rooms, message boards, and profiles

As a result of media scrutiny relating to Internet child predators and a lack of significant ad revenues, Yahoo!'s "user created" chatrooms were closed down in June 2005.[20] Yahoo! News' message board section was closed December 19, 2006, due to the trolling phenomenon.[21] In addition, in mid-October 2008, Yahoo! deleted all information in millions of user profiles with no advance notice and little explanation.[22]

Image search

On May 25, 2006, Yahoo!'s image search was criticized for bringing up sexually explicit images even when SafeSearch was on. This was discovered by a teacher who was intending to use the service with a class to search for "www". Yahoo!'s response to this was, "Yahoo! is aware of this issue and is working to resolve it as quickly as possible".[23]

Shark fin controversy

Yahoo! previously owned a 14.95% stake in Alibaba, which had been criticized for facilitating the sale of shark-derived products.[24] After investing in Alibaba, Yahoo! executives were asked about this issue, and responded: "We know the sale of shark products is both legal in Asia and a centuries-old tradition. This issue is largely a cultural-practices one."[25] Alibaba would later ban the sale of shark fins on its platform in 2009.[26]

GeoCities closure

GeoCities was a popular web hosting service founded in 1994. At the point Yahoo! purchased it in January 1999, it was reportedly the third most-browsed site on the World Wide Web.[27] Despite its popularity, it had still not become profitable by late 1998.[28]

Ten years later Yahoo! closed Geocities,[29] deleting millions of web pages in the process.[30] In September 2009, a month before it was closed, GeoCities received 10,477,049 unique visitors.[31]

Vijay Mukhi, an internet and cybersecurity expert quoted in the Business Standard

Yahoo! Groups remodel 2010

In August 2010 Yahoo! Groups started rolling out a major software change. This change was denounced by a vast majority of users.[33] On September 29, 2010, Jim Stoneham, Vice President of Yahoo!'s Communities products, announced that based on members feedback, Yahoo! Groups would be rolling back the recent changes.[34]

Flickr redesign 2013

On May 20, 2013, Flickr, Yahoo!'s image and video hosting website, unveiled a redesigned layout and additional features, including one terabyte of free storage for all users, seamless photostream, cover photo and updated Android App.[35][36] The redesigned layout fills the page with dynamically re-sized photos and, on the home page, displays recent comments on photos. Tech Radar described the new style Flickr as representing a "sea change" in its purpose.[37] Many users criticized the changes, and the site's help forum received thousands of negative comments.[38]

2014 malware attack

In January 2014, a large scale malware attack was discovered by Fox IT in the Netherlands that was targeted at Java and dated back to December 30, 2013, especially affecting users in Romania, France, and the UK and being delivered to 300,000 Yahoo! users per hour when they discovered it. Yahoo! was criticized for not providing any public guidance on the number of users affected or advice on what the affected users should do.[39][40]

Data breaches

The company reported two major data breaches of user account data to hackers during the second half of 2016. The first announced breach, reported in September 2016, had occurred sometime in late 2014, and affected over 500 million Yahoo! user accounts.[41] A separate data breach, occurring earlier around August 2013, was reported in December 2016, and affected over 1 billion user accounts.[42] Both breaches are considered the largest discovered in the history of the Internet. Specific details of material taken include names, email addresses, telephone numbers, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers, dates of birth, and encrypted passwords.[43] Further, Yahoo! reported that the late 2014 breach likely used manufactured web cookies to falsify login credentials, allowing hackers to gain access to any account without a password.[44][45]

Allegations of sexism against men

Scott Ard, a prominent editorial director fired from Yahoo in 2015, has filed a lawsuit accusing Mayer of leading a sexist campaign to purge male employees. Ard, a male employee, stated "Mayer encouraged and fostered the use of [an employee performance-rating system] to accommodate management's subjective biases and personal opinions, to the detriment of Yahoo's male employees". In the suit, Ard claimed that, prior to his firing, he had received "fully satisfactory" performance reviews since starting at the company in 2011 as head of editorial programming for Yahoo's home page, yet he was relieved of his role that was given to a woman who had been recently hired by Megan Lieberman, the editor-in-chief of Yahoo News.[47][48]

The lawsuit states:

"Liberman stated that she was terminating [Ard] because she had not received a requested breakdown of [his] duties. [Ard] had already provided that very information as requested, however, and reminded Liberman that he had done so. Liberman's excuse for terminating [Ard] was a pretext.[48]"

A second sexual discrimination lawsuit was filed separately by Gregory Anderson, who was fired in 2014, alleging the company's performance management system was arbitrary and unfair, making it the second sexism lawsuit Yahoo and Mayer faced in 2016.[49]

Illegally accessing user accounts

In October 2019, a former Yahoo engineer, Reyes Daniel Ruiz, pleaded guilty to federal charges of illegally accessing user accounts. Ruiz had hacked about 6,000 users' accounts, including those of his friends, co-workers and many young women, seeking sexual images and videos.[52][53]

See also

• Criticism of Apple Inc.
• Criticism of Facebook
• Criticism of Google
• Criticism of Microsoft