Verizon Acquires Yahoo

Written by Dave ParrackJuly 25, 2016

Yahoo has sold out, Pokemon Go is a record breaker, the Xbox One is going cheap, Netflix nabs new MST3K, and what happens at the end of Pac-Man?

Verizon Buys Yahoo For $4.8 Billion

Verizon is buying Yahoo for $4.83 billion in cash. For that chunk of change, Verizonwill acquire Yahoo’s many online entities, including its email service which still boasts 225 million active users every month. It also includes Yahoo’s Brightroll advertising service. The sale does not, however, include Yahoo Japan, or Yahoo’s stake in Alibaba.

While $4.8 billion may sound like a lot of money to you and I, it’s actually a fraction of the price Yahoo could have commanded many years ago when it was at the height of its powers. In fact, Yahoo spent more than it’s now worth on acquiringBroadcast.com in 1999. And almost as much acquiring GeoCities, which it then shut down a decade later.

Not that the current and final CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer, could ever admit that this sale represents failure on any level. In a letter to employees, which has also been posted on Tumblr, she calls Yahoo, “a company that changed the world” and “humanized and popularized the web, email, search, real-time media, and more.”

Mayer concluded:

“I’m incredibly proud of everything that we’ve achieved, and I’m incredibly proud of our team. For me personally, I’m planning to stay. I love Yahoo, and I believe in all of you. It’s important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter.”

Yahoo will join AOL at Verizon, which acquired the latter in 2015 for $4.4 billion. Which means Verizon appears to be making a habit of buying tech giants well past their prime. The deal is subject to approval from the regulators, and isn’t expected to be completed until early 2017.

Source: www.makeuseof.com