After Marissa Mayer’s failed attempt at reviving Yahoo, the iconic Silicon Valley company is set wrap up operations as it sells its core internet operations to Verizon. The deal is set to close on Tuesday. According to a report by AFP, Mayer is to get a departure package worth an estimated $186 million.
The deal with telecom giant Verizon is valued at $4.48 billion, capping a long decline from when it had a peak market value of some $125 billion in 2000.
Additionally, 15% of Yahoo’s 14,000 workforce – amounting to about 2,100 jobs – will be cut across Yahoo and AOL globally. Post the deal, Verizon will merge Yahoo with AOL and form a new unit called Oath. This will be headed by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong.
Yahoo’s decline began after Google beat it as the leader in internet search.
“Marissa inherited a mess, in a company that had already lost its leadership role in search,” Creative Strategies president and analyst Tim Bajarin told AFP.
Mayer joined Google in 1999 as its 20th employee and led efforts for hit products, including its flagship search product and homepage. After taking over as the CEO of Yahoo in 2012, she went on an acquisition spree including Tumblr, which she acquired for $1 billion in an attempt to reach a younger audience.
Yahoo’s 40% stake in Alibaba and multibillion-dollar stake in Yahoo Japan will not be transferred to Verizon but will remain in a separate entity named Altaba
Yahoo was founded in 1994 by David Filo and Jerry Yang, students of Stanford University students David Filo and Jerry Yang, Yahoo. Its initial public offering in 1996 was the largest for a tech startup at the time.
While Yahoo was touted to be the one to introduce the concept of internet search, diversifying with all content layers steered the company away from deploying the required resources in the search engine.
Based in Sunnyvale, California, Yahoo became the leading portal for the internet, with a homepage that allowed users to click on categories such as sports, finance and movies, or search for information. “In a
While Yahoo will continue to exist under Verizon, it remains to be seen what the telecommunications firm will do with it.
Image: Yahoo