Many people don't realize that Yahoo started as a directory, which is simply a list of websites separated by category for users to find their way around the internet. According to Ars Technica, that directory is still alive but will be shutting down by the end of the year. Yahoo, which apparently stands for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," found success from their directory when they started in 1994, because search engines were known as tools that rarely brought you the correct results. Eventually, they started a search engine of their own, while websites like Google were showing how useful search engines were going to become.
The directory contains hundreds of thousands of websites, but it is rarely used by Yahoo users these days. It is not to be confused with Yahoo's search engine, which will remain active for the foreseeable future. Yahoo owns part of the Chinese e-commerce website Alibaba, and it has had a significant loss in company stock value since Alibaba went public. Many believe those who had invested in Yahoo did it specifically because they owned part of Alibaba and are now less motivated to be involved with Yahoo since they can be directly involved with Alibaba.