February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Three-quarters of the jobs Yahoo! creates in Dublin will be for graduates. They will be in a range of areas including website editorial, IT, financial services and customer support. The development agency IDA Ireland played a pivotal role in bringing Yahoo! to Ireland, besting significant international competition to do so.
Ireland’s Minister For Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Micheal Martin, said that “the extent of the activities to be undertaken and the level of investment by Yahoo makes the winning of this Operations Headquarters a truly outstanding achievement for Ireland.”
Martin added in his statement that “IDA Ireland faced strong competition from other worldwide locations for this investment and the company’s decision to locate here proves that Ireland is a serious contender for the world’s largest internet companies.”
Yahoo!’s decision to set up in Dublin could be seen as part of a plan to keep pace with one of its main rivals. Search engine behemoth Google opened its European headquarters in Dublin’s Docklands last October. The so-called ‘Dublin Googleplex’ employs more than 150 people hailing from over 35 countries.
Yahoo! was founded in April 1994 by two Stanford PhD students, Jerry Yang and David Filo. It is based in Sunnyvale, California, and it claims to be the top internet brand worldwide. Its family of websites received 2.85 billion page views per day in December 2004.
Last month, Yahoo! announced 2004 revenues of $3.58bn, a 120 percent increase on the previous year. Its profits were $526m, compared to $238m in 2003.
Announcing the decision to base the European headquarters in Dublin, Yahoo! senior vice president John Marcom said that the Irish operation would be “instrumental in our success”.
Marcom added that “our decision to locate the European Operations Headquarters in Ireland was influenced by several factors – the success of our existing operation in Dublin, Overture Services, which has surpassed all forecasted operating targets; the caliber and volume of graduates available in Ireland, the up-to-date and cost competitive telecommunications and data center infrastructures, and the assistance of IDA Ireland.”
The new project will have three distinct areas – a customer support center, a web hosting center, which will support databases for Yahoo!’s family of websites in addition to other systems, and a shared services center, which will be responsible for accounting and revenue activities.
Yahoo!’s new HQ will be located in East Point Business Park, Dublin.