Yahoo Leases Silicon Valley Space That Formerly Housed Meta

Yahoo has expanded its Silicon Valley presence by leasing office space in Mountain View, according to a recent report by CBRE, which ranked the lease as the second largest in Silicon Valley during the first quarter.

The web service leased 78,000 square feet at The Village at San Antonio Center located at 391 San Antonio Road. The CBRE report did not include financial terms of the deal.

Los Angeles-based Brookfield Properties acquired a large portion of The Village in April 2021 for $630 million. The parcels that were acquired included two big office buildings that have been leased to Meta, a building that includes the Showplace ICON Mountain View movie complex with 10 screens, and a parking structure. Meta opted out of its lease late last year after not needing the space to house contract employees anymore.

Just months after Brookfield acquired the properties at The Village, Boston based-TA Realty acquired a Safeway and three other retail buildings within The Village as well. Retailers housed in the buildings include T-Mobile, a Jared Jewelry Store, Mizu Sushi Bar & Grill and SAJJ Mediterranean.

Yahoo got its start in 1995 as a bookmarks list for Stanford students and became the first such service with a large following. Over the years it added additional tech services such as email and web searching; and became the most visited website in the United States in 2008. However, it has since fallen behind Google, Facebook, YouTube and Amazon. In 2016, Yahoo sold its core business to Verizon for nearly $5 billion.

Yahoo’s move to secure more office space goes against recent moves of tech companies offloading space in Silicon Valley, according to the CBRE report. Recent trends indicate that Silicon Valley is in a downward market. The vacancy rate increased to 15.6 percent in the first quarter from 14.2 percent the previous quarter.

“Recent economic events greatly impacted the Silicon Valley office market,” the report said. “Layoffs, uncertainty around return-to-office (RTO) policies, and the struggles of the banking sector resulted in companies reassessing their short and long-term real estate strategies.”