Yahoo Search launched in 1994 and changed hands several times before Apollo Global Management bought it from Verizon in 2021 for about $5 billion. The search results come from Microsoft Bing. Yahoo layers its own features on top: Yahoo Scout for AI-generated answers, plus integrated news, finance, and sports.

Every search gets logged. Yahoo collects your IP address, search queries, browsing behavior, location, and device details. Cookies, tracking pixels, and beacons feed into advertising profiles. Search data stays on file for up to 18 months before anonymization. IP addresses stick around for 6 months.

Since Yahoo relies on Bing, your queries pass through two US companies before returning results. Both have been fined by French regulators for cookie consent violations. All data sits on US servers, subject to US surveillance laws.

Worth knowing

Yahoo holds the record for the largest data breaches in history. Attacks in 2013 and 2014 exposed all 3 billion user accounts, but the company only told users in late 2016. That delay cost Yahoo $117.5 million in settlements and a $35 million SEC fine. More recently, a 2025 class action lawsuit claims Yahoo's ConnectID system tracks users across websites through email-based identifiers that work even in private browsing mode.