Yahoo

Yahoo can proudly claim itself as one dot-com which is far from going bust. The company chalked up net income of US$253.8 million for the third quarter, ended Sep. 30, up from US$253.3 million from a year ago. Its revenue grew 47 percent to US$1.33 billion from US$907 million for the same period last year.

In fact, Yahoo managed to recover from a US$92.8 million loss in 2001 to rake in a whopping US$839.6 million net income in its fiscal year 2004, ended Dec. 31. The company earned itself a well-deserving place in the Top Tech Index for being amongst those with the fastest-growing net revenue and net income. It chalked up an average year-on-year net income growth of 285 percent, and net revenue growth of 74.5 percent, over four years.

Established in Jan. 1994 and publicly listed in Apr. 1996, Yahoo is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Cali., and has offices in Asia, Australia, Europe, Latin America, Canada and the United States.

The company has grown to become a global portal reaching over 345 million unique users in 25 countries and 13 languages, serving an average 2.4 billion page views per day. It also provides Web-based services targeted at enterprises including Corporate Yahoo, a portal tool that encompasses audio and video streaming and site management.

It is perhaps most well-known for its instant messaging (IM) tool Yahoo Messenger, which has garnered a large pool of loyal users in Asia including India, where 74 per cent of total IM users surveyed said they use Yahoo.

The company in September launched a new version of its IM tool, one of the first in the market to incorporate Internet Protocol (IP) telephony capabilities.

It also joined hands with fellow IM provider Microsoft, to make Yahoo Messenger interoperate with MSN Messenger. Scheduled to be available in the second quarter of 2006, users of these two IM programs will be able to exchange instant messages, see the presence of their contacts, share emoticons, and make PC-to-PC voice calls.

Yahoo is currently said to be in talks to acquire a stake in U.S. Internet company American Online (AOL). If successful, this bid could provide the company access to AOL's millions of search and portal users, and a bigger piece of the growing online advertising market.

But Yahoo will first have to resolve an ongoing lawsuit alleging the company of stealing trade secrets.