Under Verizon (2017–2021)
A year after the completion of the AOL acquisition, Verizon announced a $4.8 billion deal to acquire Yahoo's core Internet business, to invest in the Internet company's search engine, news, finance, sports, video, emails and Tumblr products.[13] Yahoo announced in September and December 2016 two major Internet security breaches affecting more than a billion customers.[14] As a result, Verizon lowered its offer for Yahoo by $350 million to $4.48 billion.[15]
The AOL deal and subsequent Yahoo purchase were led by Verizon's management team, including Lowell McAdam (CEO), Marni Walden (EVP Product) and Tim Armstrong. Walden had been tasked with merging the two entities and delivering on the promise of moving Verizon from an analog to digital platforms business.[16]
Two months before closing the deal for Yahoo, Verizon announced it would place Yahoo and AOL under an umbrella named Oath.[17] The deal closed on June 13, 2017, and Oath was launched.[18] Upon completion of the deal, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer resigned.[18] Yahoo operations not acquired in the deal were renamed Altaba, a holding company whose primary assets were its 15.5 percent stake in Alibaba Group and a 35.5 percent stake in Yahoo! Japan.[18] After the merger, Oath cut fifteen percent of the Yahoo-AOL workforce.[3] In 2018, Altaba sold Yahoo! Japan to SoftBank Group.
In April 2018, Helios and Matheson Analytics acquired the Moviefone movie listings website from Oath, in consideration for which Verizon took a stake in Helios and Matheson.[19][20] Also in April 2018, Verizon sold Flickr to SmugMug, for an undisclosed amount.[21]
In May 2018, Verizon and Samsung agreed to terms that would preload four Oath mobile apps onto Samsung Galaxy S9 smartphones.[22] The agreement includes Oath's Newsroom, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo! Finance, and go90 mobile video apps (closed in July 2018), with integration of native Oath advertisements into both the Oath apps and Samsung's own Galaxy and Game Launcher apps.[23][24]
On September 12, 2018, it was announced that K. Guru Gowrappan would succeed Tim Armstrong as CEO, effective October 1.[25]
On December 3, 2018, the company banned "adult content" from Tumblr effective December 17, 2018. The ban led to objections that it harms the LGBTQ community, sexual abuse survivors, sex workers, adult content blogs, and other bloggers.[26][27] The ban followed Apple's removal of the Tumblr app from the App Store because Apple objected to child pornography.[28] Some speculated Tumblr's ban was an attempt to regain access to the App Store.[29]
In December 2018, Verizon announced that it was cutting 10% of Oath's workforce[30] and would write down the value of the business by $4.6B. Verizon management blamed competitive pressures and that the business never achieved the anticipated benefits.[31] The move wiped out all of the goodwill on the balance sheets that accompanied the acquisitions.[32]
On January 8, 2019, Oath was renamed Verizon Media.[6] In August 2019, Verizon sold Tumblr to Automattic, the owner of WordPress.com, for an undisclosed amount that was reportedly less than $3 million.[33] In November 2020, Verizon sold HuffPost to BuzzFeed.[34] in an all-stock deal, remaining minority shareholder in BuzzFeed.[35]
As of December 2019, the company employed about 10,350 people.[36][37]
It reported $7.4 billion revenue in 2020.[38]
As Yahoo (2021–present)
On May 3, 2021, Verizon announced that the Verizon Media would be acquired by Apollo Global Management for roughly $5 billion, and would simply be known as Yahoo following the closure of the deal, with Verizon retaining a minor 10% stake in the new group. The acquisition was completed on September 1, 2021, with the company now known as Yahoo Also in May 2021, Yahoo shut down the Yahoo Answers service, which had been operational since 2005.[39]
On September 10, 2021, Jim Lanzone, who had been CEO of Tinder, was named CEO of Yahoo, succeeding Gowrappan.[40]
Yahoo acquired start-up The Factual in August 2022 to add algorithmically generated accuracy ratings to Yahoo News stories.[41] In October 2022, Yahoo announced it would buy nearly 25% of Taboola, becoming its largest shareholder.[42]
