Yahoo 2014 Annual Report Download - page 33

We rely on third parties to provide the technologies necessary to deliver content, advertising, and
services to our users, and any change in the licensing terms, costs, availability, or acceptance of
these formats and technologies could adversely affect our business.
We rely on third parties to provide the technologies that we use to deliver the majority of the
content, advertising, and services to our users. There can be no assurance that these providers will
continue to license their technologies or intellectual property to us on reasonable terms, or at all.
Providers may change the fees they charge users or otherwise change their business model in a
manner that slows the widespread acceptance of their technologies. In order for our services to be
successful, there must be a large base of users of the technologies necessary to deliver our content,
advertising, and services. We have limited or no control over the availability or acceptance of those
technologies, and any change in the licensing terms, costs, availability, or user acceptance of these
technologies could adversely affect our business.
Our business depends on continued and unimpeded access to the Internet by us and our users.
Internet access providers may be able to block, degrade, or charge for access to certain of our
products and services, which could lead to additional expenses and the loss of users and advertisers.
Our products and services depend on the ability of our users to access the Internet, and certain of
our products require significant bandwidth to work effectively. Currently, this access is provided by
companies that have significant market power in the broadband and internet access marketplace,
including incumbent telephone companies, cable companies, mobile communications companies, and
government-owned service providers. Some of these providers may take, or have stated that they
may take, measures that could degrade, disrupt, or increase the cost of user access to certain of our
products by restricting or prohibiting the use of their infrastructure to support or facilitate our
offerings, or by charging increased fees to us or our users to provide our offerings. Such interference
could result in a loss of existing users and advertisers, and increased costs, and could impair our
ability to attract new users and advertisers, thereby harming our revenues and growth. The adoption
of any laws or regulations that limit access to the Internet by blocking, degrading or charging access
fees to us or our users for certain services could decrease the demand for, or the usage of, our
products, services and apps, increase our cost of doing business and adversely affect our operating
results.
Technologies, tools, software, and applications could block our advertisements, impair our ability to
deliver interest-based advertising, or shift the location in which advertising appears, which could
harm our operating results.
Technologies, tools, software, and applications (including new and enhanced Web browsers) have
been developed and are likely to continue to be developed that can block or allow users to opt out of
display, search, and interest-based advertising and content, delete or block the cookies used to
deliver such advertising, or shift the location in which advertising appears on pages so that our
advertisements do not show up in the most monetizable places on our pages or are obscured. Most
of our revenue is derived from fees paid by advertisers in connection with the display of graphical
and non-graphical advertisements or clicks on search advertisements on Web pages. As a result, the
adoption of such technologies, tools, software, and applications could reduce the number of search
and display advertisements that we are able to deliver and/or our ability to deliver interest-based
advertising and this, in turn, could reduce our advertising revenue and operating results.
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