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There is a brief explanation of the reasons behind that (with links to further information) in the article:

> Yahoo! succeeds in Japan and Taiwan through its nearly two-decade-old partnership with Japanese SoftBank and its 2007 purchase of Wretch, a Taiwanese social networking site.

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That makes it sound 50/50, but it's more diluted than that - Yahoo Inc. only owns 35.15% of Yahoo Japan. Softbank owns a little more - 35.86%. The rest is owned by much smaller shareholders.

See the bottom table in http://ir.yahoo.co.jp/en/holder/status.html

SBBM is Softbank as well, so Softbank actually owns over 42% of Yahoo! Japan. In practice it's really Softbank's internet content and portal service in Japan that also leverages Yahoo! Inc. technology as needed as well as their brand.

I didn't see Taiwan on the map by the way, but yeah it's a joke amongst my Taiwanese friends that you're not a true Taiwanese unless your browser homepage is http://tw.yahoo.com/

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