It's time to say goodbye to Yahoo!
While Yahoo's core internet business was being sold to Verizon for $4.8 Billion, the remaining portions of the company left behind is renaming itself to Altaba Inc, which marks the sad ending of one of the most familiar brand names on the internet. In a public filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday, the company announced that after the planned sale of its core business to telecom giant Verizon, the leftover would change its brand name to Altaba.
So, the company's branding you are familiar with will integrate with Verizon, and it is possible that the telecom titan may continue to use the Yahoo brand for some of the services that it will acquire in the deal.
The remaining company under the new name Altaba Inc. is hanging on to its 15% ownership of Alibaba and 35.5% stake in Yahoo Japan, which is a joint venture with Softbank.
Marissa Mayer to Leave Yahoo Board
The newly formed company will operate as an investment company, and only five board members will remain at the company including Tor Braham, Catherine Friedman, Eric Brandt, Jeffrey Smith and Thomas McInerney.The rest of the company's board, including Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and co-founder David Filo, will step down from Altaba Inc. Mayer may be appointed for a role in Yahoo's integration at Verizon, though her position has yet to be announced.
Mayer's intention to resign from the new board is "not due to any disagreement with the Company on any matter relating to the Company's operations, policies or practices," says the filing.
The Yahoo acquisition deal was rumored to be on the rocks after the company disclosed multiple security breaches a few months ago affecting more than 1 Billion users. Moreover, over three months ago, Yahoo was also accused of building a secret backdoor in its system to scan the emails of hundreds of millions of its users at the request of a U.S. intelligence service. After Verizon had learned about those disclosures about hacking and spying, it was expecting a discount in the Yahoo acquisition deal, which may still be announced before the deal closes.
Yahoo — or, should we say Altaba now? — noted "risks that Verizon may assert, or threaten to assert, rights or claims with respect to the Stock Purchase Agreement as a result of facts relating to the security incidents disclosed on September 22, 2016 and December 14, 2016 and may seek to terminate the Stock Purchase Agreement or renegotiate the terms of the Sale Transaction on that basis," reads its SEC filing.
End of the Famous Pioneer of the Early Internet Era
The saddest part of the whole saga is the end of one of Silicon Valley's most recognizable leaders. Founded by Stanford graduates Jerry Yang and David Filo in 1994, Yahoo was once the king of the Internet, but it lost out to more innovative rivals including Google and Facebook.Yahoo was once a $125 billion behemoth as big in its time as Facebook or Google are today, but Mayer's time at the company has been marred by slowing growth and internal dissent, which leads to the end of one of the pioneers of the early internet era.
