Back in July 2016, Verizon announced that it had agreed to purchase Yahoo, for $4.83 billion. Following the acquisition, Verizon would combine Yahoo's assets with AOL (which it bought in 2015) to form a new entity called 'Oath.' Today the purchase has concluded, with the final sale price at $4.48 billion.
The variation between the first agreed price and the final price can be attributed to the multiple data breaches that were discovered during the purchase. The first was a data breach that occurred in 2014, with at least 500 million user accounts compromised in some way. A few months later, another data breach from 2014 was disclosed, affecting at least one billion accounts. Frankly, I'm surprised the sale price didn't drop further.
Yahoo will join Verizon's new 'Oath' subsidiary, which now includes Yahoo Sports, AOL.com, TechCrunch, Tumblr, Huffington Post, Engadget, and more. Marissa Mayer, who has been the CEO of Yahoo since 2012, has resigned from the company.
PRESS RELEASE
NEW YORK – Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, Nasdaq: VZ) today completed its acquisition of the operating business of Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO).
Verizon has combined these assets with its existing AOL business to create a new subsidiary, Oath, a diverse house of more than 50 media and technology brands that engages more than a billion people around the world.
The Oath portfolio includes HuffPost, Yahoo Sports, AOL.com, MAKERS, Tumblr, BUILD Studios, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Mail and more, with a mission to build brands people love.
Marni Walden, Verizon president of Media and Telematics, said, “The close of this transaction represents a critical step in growing the global scale needed for our digital media company. The combined set of assets across Verizon and Oath, from VR to AI, 5G to IoT, from content partnerships to originals, will create exciting new ways to captivate audiences across the globe.”
Tim Armstrong, former CEO of AOL, is now CEO of Oath, which is part of Verizon’s Media and Telematics organization. He has been leading integration planning teams since the Yahoo transaction was announced in July 2016, and Oath begins operation today as a global leader in digital and mobile. See www.oath.com for further information.
Armstrong said, “We’re building the future of brands using powerful technology, trusted content and differentiated data. We have dominating consumer brands in news, sports, finance, tech, and entertainment and lifestyle coupled with our market leading advertising technology platforms. Now that the deal is closed, we are excited to set our focus on being the best company for consumer media, and the best partner to our advertising, content and publisher partners."
Armstrong is also leading efforts to continue to build the industry’s most advanced and open advertising technology solutions, with brands such as ONE by AOL and BrightRoll that span across mobile, video, search, native and programmatic ads.
Given the inherent changes to Marissa Mayer’s role with Yahoo resulting from the closing of the transaction, Mayer has chosen to resign from Yahoo. Verizon wishes Mayer well in her future endeavors.
