A Mexican court has ruled Yahoo in breach of a contract with a former partner, Ideas Interactivas, and hit it with a $2.7 billion judgment, Yahoo announced.
The judgement is not final, and Yahoo says the case is "without merit."
Still, this is one more distraction for CEO Marissa Mayer, who is trying to turn the company's core business around and focus it on doing fewer things. Yahoo's legacy of global expansion has been an obstacle: Mayer recently shuttered Yahoo's Korean operations.
Yahoo's Mexican subsidiary announced a deal in 2003 with Ideas Interactivas and its parent company, Worldwide Directories, to create a yellow-pages site, Paginas Utiles, which would run both in print and online. That website now appears to be defunct.
At one point, the business appears to have been significant for Yahoo. Carlos Bazan-Canabal, a former Yahoo executive who left to join Worldwide Directories, claims in his LinkedIn profile that the Paginas Utiles deal contributed to bringing Yahoo Mexico's financials into break-even.
According to a Mexican news report, the first print run of Paginas Utiles was supposed to have a circulation of 800,000 copies.
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