This article is about the current incarnation of Yahoo!. For the previous incarnation that existed from 1995 to 2017, seeYahoo! Inc. (1995–2017). For other uses, seeYahoo (disambiguation).
Yahoo! Inc.
Yahoo! Inc. headquarters,770 Broadway, New York City
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational technology company that focuses on media and online business. It is the second and current incarnation of the company, afterVerizon Communications acquired the core assets ofthe original Yahoo! Inc. and merged them withAOL in 2017.[6][7] The resulting subsidiary entity was briefly calledOath Inc.[4][8][9] In December 2018, Verizon announced it wouldwrite-down the combined value of its purchases of AOL and Yahoo! by $4.6 billion, roughly half;[10] the company was renamedVerizon Media the following month in January 2019.[11]
On May 3, 2021, Verizon announced that 90 percent of the division would be acquired by American private equity firmApollo Global Management for roughly $5 billion, and would simply be known asYahoo!; Verizon would retain a ten percent stake in the new group.[12][13] The acquisition was completed on September 1, 2021.[14]
The company is headquartered inManhattan, New York.[15] As of December 2019[update], the company employed about 10,350 people.[2][16]
A year after the completion of the AOL acquisition, Verizon announced a $4.8 billion deal for Yahoo!'s core Internet business, to invest in the Internet company'ssearch,news,finance,sports,video,emails andTumblr products.[17] Yahoo! announced in September and December 2016 two majorInternet security breaches affecting more than a billion customers.[18] As a result, Verizon lowered its offer for Yahoo! by $350 million to $4.48 billion.[19]
The AOL deal and subsequent Yahoo! purchase were led by Verizon's management team, including Lowell McAdam (CEO), Marni Walden (EVP Product) andTim Armstrong.[10] Walden had been tasked with merging the two entities and delivering on the promise of moving Verizon from an analog to digital platforms business.[20] Walden exited Verizon in 2017 and as later events revealed, the integration did not deliver the expected value.
Oath logo, 2017–2019
Two months before closing the deal for Yahoo!, Verizon announced it would place Yahoo! and AOL under an umbrella named Oath.[21] The deal closed on June 13, 2017, and Oath was launched.[22] Upon completion of the deal, Yahoo! CEOMarissa Mayer resigned.[22] Yahoo! operations not acquired in the deal were renamedAltaba, a holding company whose primary assets were its 15.5 percent stake inAlibaba Group and a 35.5 percent stake inYahoo! Japan.[22] After the merger, Oath cut fifteen percent of the Yahoo!-AOL workforce.[4] In 2018, Altaba soldYahoo! Japan toSoftBank Group.
In April 2018, Verizon soldFlickr toSmugMug, for an undisclosed amount.[25]
In May 2018, Verizon andSamsung agreed to terms that would preload four Oathmobile apps ontoSamsung Galaxy S9 smartphones.[26] The agreement includes Oath's Newsroom,Yahoo! Sports,Yahoo! Finance, andgo90 mobile video apps (closed in July 2018), with integration of native Oath advertisements into both the Oath apps and Samsung's own Galaxy and Game Launcher apps.[27][28]
On September 12, 2018, it was announced thatK. Guru Gowrappan would succeed Tim Armstrong as CEO, effective October 1.[29]
On December 3, 2018, the company declared a new set of rules for the Tumblr community that took effect December 17, 2018, banning "adult content". This move raised objections that it harms their LGBTQ community, sexual abuse survivors, sex workers, adult content blogs, and other bloggers.[30][31] The move came after the Tumblr app was removed from the Apple App Store due to issues with child pornography,[32] leading some to speculate that the ban may have been made to regain access to the App Store.[33]
In December 2018, Verizon announced that it was cutting 10% of Oath's workforce[34] and would write down the value of the business by $4.6B. Verizon management blamed competitive pressures and that the business never achieved the anticipated benefits.[35] The move wiped out all of the goodwill on the balance sheets that accompanied the acquisitions.[10]
Verizon Media logo, 2019–2021
On January 8, 2019, Oath was renamed Verizon Media.[11] In August 2019, Verizon soldTumblr toAutomattic, the owner ofWordPress.com, for an undisclosed amount that was reportedly less than $3 million.[36] In November 2020, Verizon soldHuffPost toBuzzFeed.[37] in an all-stock deal, remaining minority shareholder in Buzzfeed.[38]
On May 3, 2021, Verizon announced that the Verizon Media would be acquired byApollo Global Management for roughly $5 billion, and would simply be known as Yahoo! following the closure of the deal, with Verizon retaining a minor 10% stake in the new group.[13] The acquisition was completed on September 1, 2021, with the company now known as Yahoo![14]
On September 10, 2021,Jim Lanzone, who had been CEO ofTinder, was named CEO of Yahoo!, succeeding Gowrappan.[39]
In August 2025, Yahoo! Inc was one of three companies (alongsidePerplexity andOpenAI) that are in talks to buy theGoogle Chrome web browser, possibly to boostYahoo! Search's market share.[40] This was partially backed by Apollo's private equity stake. The deal was purportedly called off following the conclusion of Google's antitrust case.[41]
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$7.4 billion (2020)[1]
