Verizon is buying Yahoo for $4.8B, "marking the end of an era for a company that once defined the internet," according to Liedtke & Arbel of the AP. It is "the second time in as many years" that Verizon, extending its digital reach, "has snapped up the remnants of a fallen internet star." The nation's largest wireless carrier paid $4.4B for AOL last year. Yahoo "will be rolled into Verizon's AOL operations and CEO Marissa Mayer may be reunited with AOL CEO Tim Armstrong." Both were execs at Google for years and Armstrong "tried unsuccessfully to convince Mayer to combine the two companies when they remained independent." Most analysts "expect the deal to end the four-year reign of Yahoo's Mayer, who flopped in her attempts to turn around Yahoo." Mayer, though, "told employees in a Monday email that she intends to stay without specifying for how long." She wrote, "I love Yahoo, and I believe in all of you. It's important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter" (AP, 7/25). In N.Y., Vindu Goel reported the deal "was reached over the weekend." Verizon bought AOL last year. Now it will add Yahoo’s consumer services -- search, news, finance, sports, video, email and the Tumblr social network -- to its portfolio. Verizon "hopes the combination will create a stronger No. 3 challenger to Google and Facebook for digital advertising revenue." The sale of Yahoo’s business "ends the company’s 22-year run as an independent entity." Founded in a trailer in '94 by two Stanford graduate students, it was "the front door to the web for a generation of internet users but failed to keep up with Google in search technology" and then "missed the social media and mobile revolutions." On top of the purchase price, Verizon will pay $1.1B to "cash out Yahoo employees' restricted stock, Yahoo said" (N.Y. TIMES, 7/25). CNN's Alesci, Fiegerman & Riley reported on a conference call with analysts after the announcement, Mayer said, "A lot of the integration discussions are still ahead of us." She 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. After reporting earnings last week, Mayer made what "may have been her final case to investors and the public" that she worked to "create a better Yahoo." But the sale price "suggests that Yahoo's glory days ended long ago." In '08, for example, Microsoft was willing to pay more than $45B for Yahoo, an offer that was rebuffed by co-Founder Jerry Yang (CNN, 7/25).
