Yahoo has tried a lot of promotional ideas over the years (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

OLD DOG, NEW TRICKS

Yahoo is still one of the most visited websites on the planet

Now the internet OG is introducing new features to help users tackle inbox overload. Yes, AI is in the first sentence of the press release.

David Crowther

6/13/25 7:45AM

Internet brands don’t tend to live very long.

Myspace, Vine, Flickr, BuzzFeed, Napster, Bebo, Vice, Tumblr, and many more have exploded onto the scene before either fading into obsolescence, obscurity, or imploding altogether — and those are just a few of the ones you’ve heard of. Thousands more never made it beyond a domain registration and a traffic-less website.

It’s remarkable, then, that Yahoo — one of the earliest mainstream internet brands — is still alive and kicking at the ripe old age of 31, with the private-equity-owned brand this week announcing a new “catch up” feature to its email service, Yahoo Mail.

In terms of features, it’s not exactly revolutionary stuff: AI-powered summaries of your emails that give you the option to delete or keep the messages hardly represent an innovative breakthrough in digital communications. Even the marketing, which includes a collaboration with a streetwear brand to create a range of “Anti Email Email Club” tees and sweatshirts, feels very 2010s.

But, for all the criticisms you could throw at an internet dinosaur like Yahoo, it’s hard to deny its continued longevity. Its email service reportedly still has over 200 million users, and data from Similarweb finds that Yahoo.com is still the sixth-most-visited website in America.

Racking up an average of more than 1.6 billion page views from March to May, Yahoo is pulling in more site visits than ChatGPT, Wikipedia, X, LinkedIn, The New York Times, ESPN, and many other household names.

Interestingly, though, we’ve started to notice a small decline in Yahoo’s traffic, per Similarweb data. The site notched 351 million visits in the week ending May 23. That was the lowest since at least April 2024, down 13% on the average weekly figure of the past 12 months. Can Yahoo still be relevant at 40 years old? What about when it hits half a century? Only time will tell.

Related reading: ChatGPT is soaring up this leaderboard — last month Americans visited the website of the AI chatbot more than Wikipedia.

Rani Molla

Tunnel Vision

9/12/25

Tesla gets permit to test autonomous cars in Nevada as autonomous driving heats up there

Amazon’s self-driving Zoox launched service this week, and Google’s Waymo is testing there.

Las Vegas Exteriors And Landmarks - 2024

Jon Keegan

9/11/25

OpenAI and Microsoft reach agreement that moves OpenAI closer to for-profit status

In a joint statement, OpenAI and Microsoft announced a “non-binding memorandum of understanding” for their renegotiated $13 billion partnership, which was a source of recent tension between the two companies.

Settling the agreement is a requirement to clear the way for OpenAI to convert to a for-profit public benefit corporation, which it must do before a year-end deadline to secure a $20 billion investment from SoftBank.

OpenAI also announced that the controlling nonprofit arm would hold an equity stake in the PBC valued at $100 billion, which would make it “one of the most well-resourced philanthropic organizations in the world.”

The statement read:

“This recapitalization would also enable us to raise the capital required to accomplish our mission — and ensure that as OpenAI’s PBC grows, so will the nonprofit’s resources, allowing us to bring it to historic levels of community impact.”

A joint statement from OpenAI and Microsoft

The statement read:

“This recapitalization would also enable us to raise the capital required to accomplish our mission — and ensure that as OpenAI’s PBC grows, so will the nonprofit’s resources, allowing us to bring it to historic levels of community impact.”

Rani Molla

9/11/25

BofA doesn’t expect Tesla’s ride-share service to have an impact on Uber or Lyft this year

Analysts at Bank of America Global Research compared Tesla’s new Bay Area ride-sharing service with its rivals and found that, for now, it’s not much competition for Uber and Lyft. “Tesla scale in SF is still small, and we don’t expect impact on Uber/Lyft financial performance in ’25,” they wrote.

Tesla is operating an unknown number of cars with drivers using supervised full self-driving in the Bay Area, and roughly 30 autonomous robotaxis in Austin. The company has allowed the public to download its Robotaxi app and join a waitlist, but it hasn’t said how many people have been let in off that waitlist.

While the analysts found that Tesla ride-shares are cheaper than traditional ride-share services like Uber and Lyft, the wait times are a lot longer (nine-minute wait times on average, when cars were available at all) and the process has more friction. They also said the “nature of [a] Tesla FSD ‘driver’ is slightly more aggressive than a Waymo,” the Google-owned company that’s currently operating 800 vehicles in the Bay Area.

Apple AI was MIA at iPhone event

A year and a half into a bungled rollout of AI into Apple’s products, Apple Intelligence was barely mentioned at the “Awe Dropping” event.

Jon Keegan9/10/25

Jon Keegan

9/10/25

Oracle’s massive sales backlog is thanks to a $300 billion deal with OpenAI, WSJ reports

OpenAI has signed a massive deal to purchase $300 billion worth of cloud computing capacity from Oracle, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

The report notes that the five-year deal would be one of the largest cloud computing contracts ever signed, requiring 4.5 gigawatts of capacity.

The news is prompting shares to pare some of their massive gains, presumably because of concerns about counterparty and concentration risk.

Yesterday, Oracle shares skyrocketed as much as 30% in after-hours trading after the company forecast that it expects its cloud infrastructure business to see revenues climb to $144 billion by 2030.

Oracle shares were up as much as 43% on Wednesday.

It’s the second example in under a week of how much OpenAI’s cash burn and fundraising efforts are playing a starring role in the AI boom: the Financial Times reported that OpenAI is also the major new Broadcom customer that has placed $10 billion in orders.

Exclusive | Oracle, OpenAI Sign Massive $300 Billion Cloud Computing Deal