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Finance

Was Buying Yahoo a Good Deal for Verizon?

In 2016, the American telecommunications company Verizon purchased the internet firm Yahoo for $5 billion USD. Back in 2008, Microsoft had offered to buy Yahoo for nearly ten times this amount -- $44.6 billion USD -- but Yahoo turned down the offer. After incurring large losses to its net worth in 2015, Yahoo ultimately accepted Verizon's offer of far less in 2016.

Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo. After going public in 1996, the company grew rapidly, acquired several other websites, and reached a peak value of $125 billion USD in 2000. However after the tech bubble burst, the website was worth only $10 billion USD. Between 2002 and 2016, the website saw several highs and lows, until it finally agreed to Verizon's offer of $5 billion USD.

More about Yahoo and Verizon:

  • "Yahoo" is allegedly an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle."
  • In 2006, Yahoo offered $1 billion USD to buy Facebook. Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg turned it down.
  • Verizon was founded in 2000 when Bell Atlantic and GTE merged and combined their US wireless assets.

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Discussion Comments

By anon996449 — On Sep 01, 2016

Wonder if that is the reason Yahoo has been less than effective lately. Seems to "glitch" a lot.

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