Yahoo!, founded in 1994, initially offered a directory of web pages and other online services. In 1997, Yahoo! introduced Yahoo! Mail, a free web-based email service that quickly gained popularity. By the early 2000s, Yahoo! Mail had become one of the leading email services, with over 100 million users. However, Yahoo!'s failure to innovate and its troubled history with data breaches led to a decline in its user base. In 2017, Yahoo! was acquired by Verizon, and its email service continues to operate under the same brand.