The Servidor de Apontadores Portugueses Online (SAPO, ) is a Portuguese portal and provider of products and services for the Internet. Founded in 1995 as a

search engine A search engine is a software system that provides hyperlinks to web pages, and other relevant information on World Wide Web, the Web in response to a user's web query, query. The user enters a query in a web browser or a mobile app, and the sea ...

, it is the largest internet portal in

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...

. The current SAPO logo was created in 2014. SAPO is an information hub and receives over 61 million visits per month. Currently, SAPO is produced by MEO - Serviços de Comunicações e Multimédia.

History

SAPO was created on September 4, 1995, at the

University of Aveiro The University of Aveiro () is a public university, in addition to providing polytechnic (Portugal), polytechnic education, located in the Portuguese city of Aveiro, Portugal, Aveiro. Founded in 1973, it has a student population of approximately ...

by six students in the Center for Informatics of the university. The name originated from the acronym of the service, S.A.P. (), which later evolved into , giving rise to the acronym SAPO. Another factor in the name was Sapo Cocas, which is the European Portuguese name of

Kermit the Frog Kermit the Frog is a Muppet character created in 1955 and originally performed by Jim Henson. An anthropomorphic green frog, Kermit is the pragmatic everyman protagonist of numerous Muppet productions, most notably as the showrunner and host o ...

. In 1997, SAPO became the property of the company Navegante and began commercial operation. At some point, it became part of

Altice Portugal Altice Portugal S.A. (formerly known as PT Portugal) is the largest telecommunications service provider in Portugal. Since 2 June 2015 the company has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Altice, a multinational cable and telecommunications company ...

Discontinued services

SAPO Fotos

SAPO Fotos was an online photo hosting, management, and sharing service launched by SAPO in 2005. It reached approximately 200,000 users and 16 million images. Among other associated projects, it had partnerships with Agência Lusa, which made their photographic archive available on SAPO Fotos, and SAPO Panoramas, which featured the best 360-degree photographs taken in Portugal. The service was discontinued in 2017.

SAPO International

SAPO expanded internationally in 2008 by opening localized portals in

Angola Angola, officially the Republic of Angola, is a country on the west-Central Africa, central coast of Southern Africa. It is the second-largest Portuguese-speaking world, Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) country in both total area and List of c ...

and Cabo Verde, followed by Moçambique and

Timor-Leste Timor-Leste, also known as East Timor, officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is a country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the coastal exclave of Oecusse in the island's northwest, and ...

in 2010. These portals featured local content in partnership with local media outlets. In 2020, the service was shut down by Altice, the company that owns SAPO.

PTM.COM

In August 1999, PT Multimédia acquired 74.9% on SAPO and UOL and Zipnet in the Brazil. In May 2000, the company became 100% owned by PTM.com, PTM first portal..In October 2007, PT Portugal's spin-off with PT Multimédia in 2007, when it was incorporated into PTC (now MEO). Currently since 2008, the portal is not part.

References

{{reflist Internet properties established in 1995 Portuguese websites Internet in Portugal 1995 establishments in Portugal Internet search engines