Verizon Media

Verizon Media is a division of Verizon Communications that focuses on media and online business. Verizon Communications acquired AOL in 2015.[5][6] When Verizon Communications purchased Yahoo! in 2017, it merged AOL and Yahoo! into a subsidiary named Oath Inc.[3][7][8]

Verizon Media
FormerlyOath Inc. (2017–2019)
TypeDivision
Industry
FoundedJune 13, 2017 (2017-06-13)
Headquarters
New York City, New York and Sunnyvale, California
,
U.S.
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Guru Gowrappan (CEO)
Brands
Services
Number of employees
10,350[1] (2019)
ParentVerizon Communications
Websitewww.verizonmedia.com
Footnotes / references
[2][3][4]

In December 2018, Verizon announced it would write down the combined value of its purchases of AOL and Yahoo! by $4.6 billion, roughly half.[9]

Verizon renamed the company Verizon Media in January 2019.[10] Within Verizon Media, AOL and Yahoo! maintain their respective brands.

Operations

Verizon Media is a division of Verizon Communications. The company maintains dual headquarters at the former AOL and Yahoo! headquarters buildings in Manhattan, New York, and Sunnyvale, California, respectively.[11] As of December 2019, the company employed about 10,350 people.[1]

History

Verizon announced a $4.4 billion deal to acquire AOL in May 2015.[12] The deal was an effort by Verizon to expand its technology and media offerings.[12] The deal officially closed a month later.[6][12]

A year after the completion of the AOL acquisition, Verizon announced a $4.8 billion deal for Yahoo!'s core Internet business, looking to invest in the Internet company's search, news, finance, sports, video, email and Tumblr products.[13] Yahoo! announced in September and December 2016 two major Internet security breaches affecting more than a billion customers.[14] As a result, Verizon lowered its offer for Yahoo! by $350 million to $4.48 billion.[15]

The AOL deal and subsequent Yahoo! purchase were led by Verizon's management team, including Lowell McAdam (CEO), Marni Walden (EVP Product) and Tim Armstrong.[9] Walden had been tasked with merging the two entities and delivering on the promise of moving Verizon from an analog to digital platforms business.[16] Walden exited Verizon in 2017 and as later events revealed, the integration did not deliver the expected value.

Oath logo, 2017–2019

Two months before closing the deal for Yahoo!, Verizon announced it would place Yahoo! and AOL under an umbrella named Oath.[17] The deal closed on June 13, 2017, and Oath was launched.[18] Upon completion of the deal, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer resigned.[18] Yahoo! operations not acquired in the deal were renamed Altaba, a holding company whose primary assets are its 15.5 percent stake in Alibaba Group and 35.5 percent stake in Yahoo! Japan.[18] After the merger, Oath cut fifteen percent of the Yahoo-AOL workforce.[3] In 2018, Altaba sold Yahoo! Japan to SoftBank Group.

In April 2018, Helios and Matheson acquired the Moviefone movie listings website from Oath. As part of the transaction, Verizon took a stake in Helios and Matheson Analytics stock.[19][20]

In May 2018, Verizon and Samsung agreed to terms that would preload four Oath applications ("apps") onto Samsung Galaxy S9 smartphones.[21] The agreement includes Oath’s Newsroom, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Finance, and go90 mobile video apps (closed in July 2018), with integration of native Oath advertisements into both the Oath apps and Samsung’s own Galaxy and Game Launcher apps.[22][23]

On September 12, 2018, it was announced that K. Guru Gowrappan would succeed Tim Armstrong as CEO, effective October 1.[24]

On December 3, 2018, the company declared a new set of rules for the Tumblr community that took effect December 17, 2018, banning "adult content". This move raised objections that it harms their LGBTQ community, sexual abuse survivors, sex workers, adult content blogs, and other bloggers.[25][26] The move came after the Tumblr app was removed from the Apple App Store due to issues with child pornography,[27] leading some to speculate that the ban may have been made to regain access to the App Store.[28]

In December 2018, Verizon announced that it was cutting 10% of Oath's workforce[29] and would write down the value of the business by $4.6B. Verizon management blamed competitive pressures and that the business never achieved the anticipated benefits.[30] The move wiped out all of the goodwill on the balance sheets that accompanied the acquisitions.[9]

Oath was renamed Verizon Media on January 8, 2019.[10]

In August 2019, Verizon sold Tumblr to Automattic, the owner of WordPress.com, for an undisclosed amount which was reportedly less than $3 million.[31]

In November 2020, Verizon sold HuffPost to BuzzFeed.[32]

Brands

Some of the digital media brands under Verizon Media include:[33]

Divested

Verizon had partial ownership of Moviefone's former parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc., until its liquidation in 2020.

Discontinued
  • Alto Mail (discontinued on December 10, 2017)[37]
  • go90 (closed in July 2018)[38]
  • Yahoo! Together (discontinued in April 2019)

References
  1. Flynn, Kerry (December 10, 2019). "Verizon Media plans to lay off 150 people this week". CNN. Retrieved December 11, 2019.
  2. Hackett, Robert (3 August 2016). "Read What Yahoo Is Telling Employees About the Verizon Deal". Fortune.com. Retrieved 9 July 2017.
  3. Spangler, Todd (June 19, 2017). "Tim Armstrong Unveils Oath: AOL-Yahoo Combo Is as Big as Netflix and Looking to Expand". Variety. Retrieved June 19, 2017.
  4. Lomas, Natasha. "Latest round of Verizon layoffs at Oath affects <4% of staff globally". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2018-02-19.
  5. Lunden, Ingrid (23 June 2015). "Verizon completes its acquisition of AOL for $4.4B". Tech Crunch. Retrieved 7 September 2017.
  6. Snider, Mike (23 June 2015). "Verizon completes AOL acquisition, readies mobile video service". USA Today. Retrieved 7 September 2017.
  7. Goel, Vindu (2017-06-13). "Verizon Completes $4.48 Billion Purchase of Yahoo, Ending an Era". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-09-07.
  8. Chokshi, Niraj; Goel, Vindu (2017-04-03). "Verizon Announces New Name Brand for AOL and Yahoo: Oath". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-04-04.
  9. Spangler, Todd (11 December 2018). "Verizon to Take $4.6 Billion Charge for Oath, Wiping Out Nearly All of Yahoo-AOL Unit's Goodwill Value". Variety.com. Retrieved 17 December 2018.
  10. "Oath is now Verizon Media". Oath. 2019-01-07. Retrieved 2019-01-09.
  11. Schubarth, Cromwell (14 June 2017). "Confirmed: Combined Yahoo, AOL cutting 2,100 jobs". Silicon Valley Business Journal. Retrieved 7 September 2017.
  12. DiChristopher, Tom (23 June 2015). "Verizon closes AOL acquisition". CNBC. Retrieved 7 September 2017.
  13. Goel, Vindu (2016-07-25). "Verizon Announces $4.8 Billion Deal for Yahoo's Internet Business". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-09-07.
  14. Goel, Vindu; Perlroth, Nicole (2016-12-14). "Yahoo Says 1 Billion User Accounts Were Hacked". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-09-07.
  15. Fiegerman, Seth (21 February 2017). "Verizon cuts Yahoo deal price by $350 million". CNN. Retrieved 7 September 2017.
  16. O'Reilly, Lara (25 July 2016). "This woman has been given the job of merging Yahoo with AOL". Business Insider.
  17. Chokshi, Niraj; Goel, Vindu (2017-04-03). "Verizon Announces New Name Brand for AOL and Yahoo: Oath". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-09-08.
  18. Tharakan, Anya George; Shepardson, David (13 June 2017). "Verizon closes Yahoo deal, Mayer steps down". Reuters. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  19. Smith, Gerry (April 5, 2018). "MoviePass Acquires Moviefone to Bolster Film-a-Day Service". Bloomberg. Retrieved April 5, 2018.
  20. Carr, Flora (April 5, 2018). "MoviePass Just Bought Moviefone. Here's What It Means for Moviegoers". Fortune. Retrieved April 6, 2018.
  21. Bode, Karl (4 May 2018). "Verizon Brings Its Oath, Yahoo Bloatware to Samsung Phones". DSLReports.com. Retrieved 6 May 2018.
  22. Gartenberg, Chaim (2 May 2018). "Verizon is putting Oath bloatware like Go90 on its Galaxy S9 phones". The Verge. Retrieved 6 May 2018.
  23. Sloane, Garett (2 May 2018). "Verizon Uses Mobile Might to Get Oath Apps Onto Samsung Phones". AdAge. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
  24. Fung, Brian (12 September 2018). "Verizon says Oath CEO Tim Armstrong is stepping down". The Washington Post.
  25. Ho, Vivian (2018-12-03). "Tumblr's adult content ban dismays some users: 'It was a safe space'". The Guardian. Retrieved 2018-12-04.
  26. Kelly, Heather (2018-12-03). "How Tumblr's adult content crackdown could alienate users". CNN Business. Retrieved 2018-12-04.
  27. Porter, Jon (2018-11-20). "Tumblr was removed from Apple's App Store over child pornography issues". The Verge. Retrieved 4 December 2018.
  28. Roettgers, Janko. "Tumblr to Ban All Adult Content". Nasdaq. Retrieved 4 December 2018.
  29. Byers, Dylan (14 December 2018). "Verizon plans to cut 10 percent of Oath staff". NBC News. Retrieved 17 December 2018.
  30. Jackson, Abby (2018-12-11). "Verizon will write down $4.6 billion in value of Oath, the unit that combined AOL and Yahoo assets". Business Insider. Retrieved 2018-12-17.
  31. Siegel, Rachel (13 August 2019). "Tumblr once sold for $1.1 billion. The owner of WordPress just bought the site for a fraction of that". The Washington Post.
  32. Lee, Edmund; Hsu, Tiffany (19 November 2020). "BuzzFeed to Acquire HuffPost From Verizon Media". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 December 2020.
  33. "Our brands". Verizon Media. Retrieved 13 December 2020.
  34. Krouse, Sarah (January 23, 2019). "Verizon To Lay Off 7% of Media Group Staff". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
  35. Miller, Chance (2019-08-12). "WordPress owner Automattic to acquire Tumblr for 'nominal amount'". 9to5Mac. Retrieved 2019-08-12.
  36. Hagey, Benjamin Mullin and Keach (2020-11-19). "BuzzFeed to Acquire HuffPost in Stock Deal With Verizon Media". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2020-12-08.
  37. Fingas, Jon (25 October 2017). "Alto Mail is shutting down now that AOL is part of Oath". Engadget. Retrieved 13 December 2020.
  38. Statt, Nick (2018-06-28). "Verizon is shutting down its original video app Go90". The Verge.
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