Yahoo in International

Yahoo! is known across the world with its multi-lingual interface. The site is available in over 20 languages, including English. The official directory for all of the Yahoo! International sites is world.yahoo.com

Each of the international sites are wholly owned by Yahoo!, with the exception of Yahoo! Japan, in which it holds a 34.79% minority stake and Yahoo-7 in Australia which is a 50-50 agreement between Yahoo! and the Seven Network . Historically, Yahoo! entered into joint venture agreements with Softbank for the major European sites (UK, France, Germany) and well as Korea and Japan. In November 2005, Yahoo! purchased the minority interests that SoftBank owned in Europe and Korea.

Yahoo! holds a 40% stake in Alibaba , which manages a web portal in China using the Yahoo! brand name. Yahoo! in the USA does not have direct control over the operations of Alibaba, which operates as a completely independent company.

In 2008, Darren Petterson, business development director for Yahoo! Europe confirmed that Yahoo! was going to launch a Romanian version of their website by the end of the year, however, due to the financial crises at that time, those plans were frozen. In February 2010, new reports appeared in the Romanian media claiming that the portal will finally launch by June the same year, as some services like Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Mobile are already translated into Romanian. On 8 March 2011 Yahoo! launched its Romania local service.

In 2000, Yahoo! was taken to court in France by parties seeking to prevent French citizens from purchasing memorabilia relating to the Nani party. In March 2004, Yahoo! launched a paid inclusion program whereby commercial websites are guaranteed listings on the Yahoo! search engine, but Yahoo! discontinued the paid inclusion / search submit program at the end of 2009. Yahoo! has also been criticized for providing ads via the Yahoo! ad network to companies who display them through spyware and adware.

Yahoo! as well as other search engines, have cooperated with the Chinese government in censoring. search results. In April 2005, dissident Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison for "providing state secrets to foreign entities" as a result of being identified by IP address by Yahoo! The extent of Yahoo's foreknowledge of Shi's fate is disputed by Yahoo! General Counsel and human rights organizations. Human rights groups also accuse Yahoo! of aiding authorities in the arrest of dissident Li Zhi. In September 2003, dissident Wang Xioning was convicted of charges of "incitement to subvert state power" and sentenced to ten years in prison. Yahoo! helped authorities to identify posts he had made in a Yahoo! group calling for an end to single-party rule. Both Xiaoning's wife and the World Organization for Human Rights sued Yahoo! under human rights laws on behalf of Wang and Shi.

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. On May 25, 2006, Yahoo!'s image search was criticized for bringing up sexually explicit images even when SafeSearch was on. Yahoo! is a 40% owner of Alibaba Group , which was previously a subject of controversy for allowing the sale of shark-derived products. Nevertheless, the company banned the sale of shark fin products on all its e-commerce platforms in January 1, 2009. On November 30, 2009, Yahoo! was criticized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for sending a DMCA notice to whistle-blower website "Cryptome" for publicly posting details, prices, and procedures on obtaining private information pertaining to Yahoo!'s subscribers.