EGroups
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Internet services |
| Founded | 1997 |
| Founder | Scott Hassan |
| Fate | Acquired by Yahoo! |
| Headquarters | United States |
| Products | Email list management, archived messages, collaborative calendars, file sharing, group messaging |
| Parent | Yahoo! (from 2000) |
eGroups.com functioned as a platform for managing email lists, allowing users to establish and participate in mailing groups. Its capabilities included archived messages, collaborative calendars, file sharing, and group messaging. In August 2000, Yahoo! purchased eGroups for $432 million in stock, subsequently incorporating it into Yahoo! Groups, which remained under Verizon's control until the end of 2019.
History
Originally launched in 1997 by Scott Hassan under the name FindMail as a service for archiving email lists, the company pivoted towards hosting mailing groups following Martin Roscheisen’s appointment as CEO in 1998. Renamed eGroups by that time, the service expanded to 250,000 users and attracted $810,000 in venture capital from Atlas Venture. By October 1998, its user base had grown to 1.2 million with an average daily increase of 12,000 members; despite a $40 million acquisition offer from Excite, eGroups chose to accept a $5.1 million investment from Sequoia Capital instead.
In September 1999, eGroups merged with ONElist, combining their user communities to total 13 million members who collectively exchanged more than 1.3 billion emails each month. The company secured $42 million in funding by January 2000 and proceeded with filing for an initial public offering in March of that year. By August 2000, with a user base of 18 million, eGroups was acquired by Yahoo!.
Following Verizon’s takeover of Yahoo! in 2019, the gradual discontinuation of Yahoo! Groups features commenced: file uploads were disabled in October 2019 and all stored files were deleted by January 2020. However, mailing list functionality continued until the service was officially terminated on December 15, 2020.