This marks the end of an era for a company that once defined the internet. Verizon, one of the US’s largest telecommunication carriers, has agreed to buy Yahoo for $4.83 billion.
The American technology major still holds billions of visitors a month as a front door web for the early generation of internet users ends its journey as an independent company.
According to the Silicon Valley Company board, Yahoo will sell its core internet operations and land holdings to Verizon communication. After the sale, Yahoo shareholders will be left with about $41 billion in expenditure in the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, as well as Yahoo Japan and a small portfolio of patents. The deal, which does not include Yahoo’s stake in Chinese online giant Alibaba, is expected to close by the first quarter of next year.
On the sale of Yahoo’s core internet operations, Marissa Mayer, chief executive of the company, comments, “Yahoo is a company that has changed the world, and will continue to do so through this combination with Verizon and AOL.”
The company once was in the front row in the web search business and was valued at around $125 billion in 2000. Yahoo has so many reasons behind this step, and one of its ratiocinations is that Yahoo’s value lies in its users, more than any sites other than Google and Facebook. But over the last decade, it has lost advertising revenue and searches traffic to those same companies.
The deal is expected to close within the first quarter of next year, though it still needs approval from Yahoo shareholders.
