Verizon Acquires Yahoo

Three weeks ago, I wrote about why I don’t like the new Yahoo. Then last Monday, news broke that Verizon would acquire Yahoo for $4.8 billion in cash. This news doesn’t come as a surprise to me. Yahoo has been going downhill for years. At its peak in 1999, Yahoo was valued at $111 billion.

I’m perplexed by Yahoo’s struggles though… they have a billion active monthly users, including 600 million on mobile.

Also I wonder why they shut down Yahoo Directory. That was a cash cow! $299 for one listing annually. Other Yahoo failures could include acquisitions like Flickr, Tumblr and Delicious. To me, they’ve been making a lot of questionable business decisions over the years. And then, you have all these changes on Yahoo which to me doesn’t seem to offer better user experience.

With this acquisition of Yahoo, Verizon continues to grow its global brand with one of the largest portfolios of web properties. According to BusinessInsider: “The sale does not include Yahoo’s cash, its shares in Alibaba Group Holdings, its shares in Yahoo Japan, Yahoo’s convertible notes, certain minority investments, and Yahoo’s non-core patents (called the Excalibur portfolio).” Yahoo will subsequently change it’s name once the sale is finalized.