Verizon to Pay $4.8 Billion for Yahoo’s Core Business

[ABX]

Verizon seems to be trying to lock in a major market share of the internet content backbone. The failures of others who purchased AOL (Verizon purchased last year) and Yahoo, is they tried to just continue them as the core business. Verizon is trying to leverage what those existing businesses offer in terms of the massive internet content market share and infuse that as part of its overall business. It seems like they are trying to completely redefine themselves from a telecom to a content technology and distribution platform with their telecom business as the engine and these content providers as the fuel.

Yahoo was the front door to the web for an early generation of internet users, and its services still attract a billion visitors a month.

But the internet is an unforgiving place for yesterday’s great idea, and on Sunday, Yahoo reached the end of the line as an independent company.

The board of the Silicon Valley company agreed to sell Yahoo’s core internet operations and land holdings to Verizon for $4.8 billion, according to people briefed on the matter, who were not authorized to speak about the deal before the planned announcement on Monday morning.

After the sale, Yahoo shareholders will be left with about $41 billion in investments in the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, as well as Yahoo Japan and a small portfolio of patents.....

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/25/business/yahoo-sale.html?_r=1

[bolobaby]

Ugh. Why? Dumb.

[geronl]

I don't think Yahoo is worth that much

[SirLinksALot]

Forbes called this one of the  "saddest deals in Tech history"

See here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2016/07/25/yahoo-sells-to-verizon-for-5-billion-marissa-mayer/#76f28e9b71b4

EXCERPT:

Yahoo’s seventh and final CEO, Marissa Mayer, will reportedly depart with severence pay worth more than $50 million.

The sale will unite Yahoo with another fallen star, AOL, the first web portal Verizon bought last year for $4.4 billion. The United States’ largest wireless provider is betting nearly $10 billion that combining the two formerly dominant websites will give it an edge in mobile content and advertising technology it can leverage across its more than 140 million subscribers.

But the biggest story today is how Yahoo squandered its massive head start and let each wave of new technology in search, social, and mobile pass it by. Yahoo remains largely the same company it was a decade ago — a portal that hundreds of millions of users rely on for everything from news and weather to key functions like email and games like fantasy football. As the attention of the world shifted to smartphone apps, Yahoo’s last advantage in the desktop world began to fade.

[Wingnut]

Forbes called this one of the  "saddest deals in Tech history"

See here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2016/07/25/yahoo-sells-to-verizon-for-5-billion-marissa-mayer/#76f28e9b71b4

EXCERPT:

Yahoo’s seventh and final CEO, Marissa Mayer, will reportedly depart with severence pay worth more than $50 million.

The sale will unite Yahoo with another fallen star, AOL, the first web portal Verizon bought last year for $4.4 billion. The United States’ largest wireless provider is betting nearly $10 billion that combining the two formerly dominant websites will give it an edge in mobile content and advertising technology it can leverage across its more than 140 million subscribers.

But the biggest story today is how Yahoo squandered its massive head start and let each wave of new technology in search, social, and mobile pass it by. Yahoo remains largely the same company it was a decade ago — a portal that hundreds of millions of users rely on for everything from news and weather to key functions like email and games like fantasy football. As the attention of the world shifted to smartphone apps, Yahoo’s last advantage in the desktop world began to fade.

I'd agree with that.  I only go to yahoo for FFootball anymore.  I closed my email with them years ago.   And all the incessant "sponsored" clickbait news stories polluting their newsfeed page drove me away from that too.