Walla!

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Walla! Communications Inc.

Type	Public (TASE: ואלה)
Founded	Israel (1995)
Headquarters	Tel Aviv, Israel
Key people	Avraham Gabai, CEO Erez Philosoph, Founder & Vice President Ilan Yeshua, Vice President Gadi Hadar, Founder
Industry	Internet services
Net income	₪12.3 Million NIS (2005)
Employees	115 (est.)
Website	www.walla.co.il

Walla! (Hebrew: וואלה!) is an Israeli internet news portal and E-mail services provider. One of the first Israeli internet portals, Walla! is considered as one of the most popular web sites in the country. It was founded by Erez Philosoph and Gadi Hadar in 1995 to serve as a guide to internet sites. By 1998, the company had gone public on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and in 2001 it merged with IOL, a similar site run by the Ha'aretz Group. To this day, most of it's news stories still come from the Ha'aretz Group.

The website offers many programs and services, a search engine, E-mail, news, online shops, chats, and video on demand. The main holders of the company are Bezeq and Ha'aretz Group.

[edit] Main Services

Walla!Mail - Free E-mail including a five gigabyte inbox.

Walla!Shops - Online shopping network.

Walla!Music - On demand music as well as the option to listen to various radio stations live.

Walla!Fun - Games and Jokes.

Walla!Cellular - Downloads for mobile phones.

Walla!pedia - In 2005 Walla has made use of the GFDL copyright license on which Wikipedia runs and copied the entire Hebrew Wikipedia's database. Walla! displays the articles under the headline Walla!pedia, but mentions that the articles originated from Wikipedia.

Screenshot of Walla!'s main page

Unlike Wikipedia, the users cannot edit the articles and the former versions and history of the articles are not shown. The copied database is out of date and thus includes some mistakes or even vandalism which was present at the moment at which the copying occurred. For example, in Walla!pedia the article on Ariel Sharon still declares the he is the prime minister of Israel.