Justin Sullivan
/ Getty Images
Originally published on May 3, 2021 1:51 pm
Yahoo and AOL, two of the internet's oldest and best-known brands, will have a new owner. Again.
Verizon announced it is spinning off the properties, which it acquired in separate transactions in 2015 and 2017, to the private equity firm Apollo in a deal valued at $5 billion.
In buying AOL and Yahoo, Verizon was hoping to partake in some of the big advertising dollars that large tech companies such as Facebook and Google were raking in.
However, that bet didn't quite pay off as it had hoped, and Verizon ended up writing down sizable losses. At the same time, its rivals' grip on internet advertising has strengthened further