Instead, Yahoo tried to buy Google and Facebook in those companies’ formative years, but it was rebuffed and then dwarfed by them. “Maybe trading Yahoo stock for Verizon is a good deal”, said Ireland. Now the move is not likely to affect the retail foreign exchange brokerage business of Yahoo Japan in a material way.
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Yahoo will be integrated with AOL under the Product Innovation and New Businesses organization at Verizon, according to a statement by Verizon on Monday.
The slump deepened even as advertisers poured torrents of cash into what is now a $160 billion market for digital advertising, according to research firm eMarketer. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2017.
The sale puts an end to Yahoo’s 21-year history as an independent company. Verizon bought AOL for $4.4 billion a year ago.
It’s a far cry from her first days at Yahoo when one employee hung up a poster in the office showing Mayer’s face above the word “hope” in bold, capital letters.
Yahoo declined to comment for this story. A spokesman for Yahoo said it’s “too early to say” whether she will stay on as CEO, accept a new role at Verizon, or step aside.
“It’s a decade of mismanagement that has finally ended for Yahoo”, said Recon Analytics analyst Roger Entner.
She added that the agreement is “an exceptional outcome for Yahoo shareholders” and that Verizon was chosen because it “believed in our vision the most”.
“I don’t anticipate Verizon doing away with the Yahoo brand, they will maintain the Yahoo name on a lot of its very good media properties”.
“It’s the eyeballs that generate the advertising, you have to get to that viewership to get the advertisers to advertise, and that’s the model that we have to follow”, said Verizon CFO Francis Shammo at an investment conference in May in response to a question about Yahoo’s appeal.
Mayer also tried to frame the deal in a positive light on the call. She touted Verizon’s potential to “accelerate our revenue stream in digital advertising” and repeatedly said she was “excited” for the future.
Verizon is now expected to combine Yahoo!’s search, email and messenger assets with AOL’s advertising technology tools, which analysts say will give the top wireless operator in the US a significant foothold in the digital advertising market.
Mayer was brought on board in 2012 from Google seeking to revitalise the Silicon Valley icon, which at its peak had a market value of over United States dollars 100 billion.
Trying to revive it’s ailing business, Yahoo, which was found in 1994, also held talks with Facebook in March this year about an advertising partnership to allow the social networking site to sell ads on Tumblr. She brought in TV journalist Katie Couric as Yahoo’s “global anchor”.
If we look closely, Yahoo Mail struggles while its Messenger is nearly nowhere. That deal was valued at $4.4 billion; it seems Yahoo is worth an extra $430 million.
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But Mayer is “basically an egghead engineer who screwed up these consumer brands”, one former Yahoo exec said.
