Yahoo has always been a web portal, it has mostly used third-party search engines throughout its history. First Inktomi, then even Google (remember the Google logo on the results?), until it only recently developed its own, which it is now discarding in favor of Bing. I used to use Yahoo as my primary web portal, until web portals in general became to cluttered for me.
Yahoo is still the largest online email service, which I still use.