Verizon to acquire Yahoo!

Thursday, July 28, 2016

On Monday, US telecom giant Verizon announced acquisition of Yahoo! for a reported amount of US$4.83 billion (€4.36 billion). Per the all-cash deal, Verizon would own only the core web business — in particular, Yahoo! Japan and Alibaba would not be acquired by Verizon.

Going public in 1996, Yahoo! provided e-mail service a year later. Once having a worth of US$ 125 billion, Yahoo!'s value on Friday's closing was about $37 billion. Eight years ago, Microsoft offered US$44 billion for Yahoo!'s acquisition. The deal is expected to complete next year.

Last year, Verizon gained ownership of Huffington Post, TechCrunch, and Engadget as it purchased their owner America Online (AOL) for US$4.4 billion. Acquisition of Yahoo! means Verizon would own micro-blogging website Tumblr which was purchased by Yahoo! under ex-Google employee and Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer in 2013. Tumblr was formed by school dropout David Karp in 2007. Verizon would also own photo sharing site Flickr, acquired by Yahoo! in 2005.

Yahoo! received bids from the owner of The Daily Mail as well as from AT&T — another American telecom giant. After handing over ownership to Verizon, Yahoo! would be selling about 3,000 patents at auction.

Though Mayer has expressed she would like to remain the CEO, CNBC reported Verizon CEO Marni Walden is yet to decide the leadership team. Mayer said it was a big day for Yahoo!.

This acquisition would end Yahoo!'s 20 years as an independent company and an early-emerging company in Silicon Valley, California. The company started as "Jerry and David's Guide To The World Wide Web" in 1994, by Jerry Yang and David Filo based at Stanford University.

Have an opinion on this story? Share it!

Sources

Alex Hern. "From Tumblr to Katie Couric, here's everything Verizon just bought from Yahoo" — The Guardian, July 25, 2016
Brian Solomon. "Yahoo Sells To Verizon In Saddest $5 Billion Deal In Tech History" — Forbes, July 25, 2016
"Verizon confirms $4.83 billion buyout of Yahoo, marking end of an era: 10 things to know" — Economic Times, July 25, 2016
Dominic Rushe. "Marissa Mayer hits out at 'gender bias' as Yahoo is sold for $5bn" — The Guardian, July 25, 2016

External link

Marissa Mayer. "Verizon to acquire Yahoo's operating business" — Tumblr, July 25, 2016

Share this:

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License