And then, just like that, it was over.
As has been widely anticipated and widely reported, Yahoo’s been consumed by Verizon, which is now combining with the AOL properties under the Verizon umbrella.
Amid the marquee combination, Marissa Mayer, who had been the head of Yahoo, has resigned that position, pocketing a $23 million payout in the process of leaving the company.
TechCrunch reported that as many as 50 media properties (including TechCrunch itself) serving 1 billion people worldwide will be combined into a Verizon unit that will be called Oath, to be helmed by former AOL CEO Tim Armstrong.
TechCrunch notes that Yahoo’s swan song marks the end of an independent Yahoo, which had struggled in recent years amid competitive threats from behemoths such as Google. Yahoo, like so many others, was swept up into the merger and acquisition wave that had been the hallmark of media and content firms. Scale, said TechCrunch, was and still remains among the key concerns within media pacts, and carriers have joined the fray.
In a statement by Marni Walden, president of Verizon Media and Telematics (the operations that will house Oath), stated that “the combined set of assets across Verizon and Oath, from VR to AI, 5G to IoT, from content partnerships to originals, will create exciting new ways to captivate audiences across the globe.”
As Verizon is restructured, staff cuts on the order of 15 percent will be in the offing, tied in part to sales and marketing.
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