Since both Yahoo and AOL have lost their relevance in the age of social network, a new report from media company The Verge has it that Verizon was in talk to offload its media assets which includes AOL and Yahoo!.
Both aforementioned services were super popular back in the early days of the internet especially when internet search was just on the rise.
Yahoo! seems to have lost its place to the likes of Google and Bing in the search engine market and while it continued to be one of the top media site with millions of daily visitors, it’s relevance in other areas such as Email service provision seems to have dwindled with Gmail taking the lead with billions of email accounts hosting.
The following list includes all the brands part of the Verizon Media group:
- Advertisement -
- Yahoo!
- Yahoo! Mail
- Tech Crunch
- Yahoo! Finance
- Engadget
- Yahoo! Entertainment
- RYOT
- AOL
- Yahoo! Life
- Yahoo! News
- Yahoo! Fantasy
- Yahoo! Sports
- Rivals
- Makers
- Built by Girls
- AutoBlog
- Flurry
- In the Know
The sales was reportedly made to the Apollo Global Management which is the parent company of the Venetian Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.
The deal is said to be in the region of US$5 Billion unlike the earlier combined worth of the assets which was about US$9 billion (US$4.4 Billion for AOL and US$4,5 billion for Yahoo!)
Following the deal of AOL and Yahoo’s sale, Verizon remains with 10% stake in the media group.
One of Yahoo!’s lost assets was the sales of the blogging social network Tumblr back in 2019 for a fee around US$3 million to Automattic which is a massive loss considering the fact that the asset was purchased for a fee worth US$1.1 billion back in 2013.
Tumblr quickly lost its relevance when it banned NSFW-related content after it tried to appease Apple when its app was taken down from the App Store over the fear of child pornography which led to Tumblr actively cracking down pornographic contents in order to redeem its image in the eyes of Apple but things were never the same with this decision.
Looking to the future, Guru Gowrappan will be directing the new Yahoo. Reed Raymond, Apollo partner says “…we look forward to working with Guru, his talented team, and our partners at Verizon to accelerate Yahoo’s growth in its next chapter,”. The new owners expect to get the new Yahoo back on on the map, or at least try to.
Yahoo! was one of the most beloved place on the web back in the early 2000s and that old glory sees to have been long gone but the new owners might have a new direction and vision for the platform and how well it will fair in the near future.
