Yahoo!, meet Verizon: Verizon buys Yahoo's core business

In a move that quite a few folks weren't expecting, Verizon (Verizon Communications Inc.) has bought the core business of Yahoo (Yahoo! Inc.).

Being that the company with the purple logo had established itself as a advertising & media company, the purchase makes a bit of sense. Yahoo had been struggling to adjust to what people wanted, and even with various CEOs just couldn't get a large share of the market despite its innovations (and purchases of other companies). Given that the deal is valued at just under $5 billion (USD), Verizon clearly sees the potential for synergy between its formerly competing acquisitions.

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You may remember that it wasn't long ago that Verizon also bought AOL. AOL, much like Yahoo, had found itself in an age where its relevance was waning as a brand to the average consumer, but still had strong core technologies which, with enough capital and the right people at the helm, could be revived to stage a takeover of the web as we know it today. That deal was valued at $4.4 billion; it seems Yahoo is worth an extra $430 million.

Verizon's goal is to "create a new rival in mobile media technology reaching over 1B users with an unrivaled roster of the world’s most beloved brands". Best of luck with that one.

Now all that's left is to see whether the brand will get to stick around for long (as the AOL brand has), or if it will be slowly absorbed directly under the Verizon umbrella. And it'll be interesting to see if Yahoo and Microsoft continue to collaborate on search traffic & share ad traffic once the transaction with Verizon is complete. Maybe more Yahoo branding will even manage to trickle downstream into Verizon Wireless products.

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Let the battle between Google, Verizon/AOL/Yahoo, & all other contenders commence.

(Source: Verizon)

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