A138 Like Microsoft Corp.'s chairman, Bill Gates, Son was con-vinced at an early stage that the use of personal computers would spread, and so started a software wholesale business. He was also extremely quick to see the potential of the Internet and acquired Internet-related companies mainly in the U.S. The company grew rapidly with the expansion of the Internet. His early investment in Yahoo! Inc. in the United States and his subsequent founding of the joint-stock company Yahoo Japan Corp. that runs YAHOO! JAPAN are indicative of his foresight.

In 1996 with News Corporation, headed by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, Softbank jointly bought shares in TV Asahi Corporation, becoming the television channel's largest single shareholder, which caused alarm. The Asahi Shimbun Company newspaper enterprise then bought the shares from News Corporation and Softbank, but the episode increased Softbank's
name recognition at a stroke. In 2001, Son started Yahoo! BB,

A broadband Internet service provider that uses the asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) system. For subscribers it started a free telephone service using voice over IP (VOIP) technology, or IP telephony, that enables them to call each other free of charge, and entered into the communications business. Subsequently, Softbank resorted to a strategy of focusing management resources on communications business. In 2004, it acquired the major fixed-line telephone operator Japan Telecom Co., Ltd. and in 2006 the Japanese subsidiary of the British mobile-phone operator Vodafone, thereby entering the mobile-phone market and creating a general communications company.