So Verizon owns AOL and now it bought Yahoo!
And now Verizon is selling it all to Apollo!
Verizon recently completed its $4.4 billion acquisition of Internet pioneer AOL. The deal comes 15 years after the company joined forces with Time Warner in 2000, which is widely considered one of the biggest business flops in U.S. corporate history.
According to Fortune, Verizon is a telecom giant. It is at #15 on the Fortune 500.
Verizon has 108.6 billion mobile connections.
While AOL may be most known for its dial-up services and growing content empire —which includes The Huffington Post, Engadget and TechCrunch—it also has put together a sophisticated suite of advertising technologies for online and traditional media that no other company (aside from Google and Facebook) can match.
AOL’s platform is particularly strong in video advertising—which CommScore says reaches more than 50% of the U.S. population. The Internet company's successful digital platform will also coincidentally assist Verizon's plans to launch its own Internet TV service, which it announced this year after buying Intel’s media assets in 2014 and video delivery network EdgeCast in 2013.
After Verizon scoops up Yahoo's Internet assets, what remains of Yahoo -- mostly investment holdings in Alibaba (BABA, Tech30) -- will be renamed Altaba. Mayer will step down from the board of that company once the sale is complete.
Yahoo as we know it may be done. But at least we'll always have Oath and Altaba.
