Yahoo and AOL, formerly known as Verizon Media, have officially been acquired by their new owners and renamed as simply “Yahoo.”
Verizon announced it was selling the properties to Apollo Global Management in May in a deal said to be worth $5 billion, around half of the nearly $9 billion the telecom giant originally.
A string of poor business choices has ultimately led to the company’s demise, and recently Verizon agreed to purchase Yahoo’s core business for $4.83 billion. Yahoo presents an interesting business case for online MBA students, who can learn from both Yahoo’s successes and mistakes.
How much did Verizon sell Yahoo for?
$5 billion
Private equity firm Apollo Global Management this morning announced that it has completed its acquisition of Yahoo (formerly known as Verizon Media Group, itself formerly known as Oath) from Verizon. The deal is worth $5 billion, with $4.25 billion in cash, plus preferred interests of $750 million.
What companies does Yahoo own?
| Date | Company | Derived products |
|---|---|---|
| June 28, 2001 | LAUNCH Media | Yahoo! Music |
| February 12, 2002 | Hotjobs.com | Yahoo! HotJobs |
| December 23, 2002 | Inktomi Corporation | Yahoo! Search |
| June 14, 2003 | Overture Services, Inc. | Yahoo! Search Marketing |
Meanwhile, Yahoo will bring in hundreds of millions more viewers from sites like News, Sports, and Finance to complement Verizon’s popular properties like TechCrunch and Huffington Post. In the US, comScore puts Yahoo at No. 3 among digital properties.
“Yahoo and AOL popularized the Internet, email, search and real-time media,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said in the joint announcement of the deal. “It’s poetic to be joining forces with AOL and Verizon as we enter our next chapter focused on achieving scale on mobile.”
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Of course, even with the AOL and Yahoo assets, Verizon has a long way to go (paywall) to catch up with the online advertising leaders.
Verizon with AOL currently holds a mere 1.8% of the $69 billion digital ad market in the US. Yahoo has about 3.4%. Google and Facebook together claim about half of it. Looked at another way, though, there’s plenty of market share to steal, which can’t be said of its traditional business.
