Yahoo! Verizon buys the grandaddy of internet portals for $4.83 billion in cash

The Verizon-Yahoo deal was a foregone conclusion, expected to be announced on Monday, and sure enough, the carrier just put up a press release as breaking news on its website. According to the posting, Verizon will acquire Yahoo's assets for $4.83 billion in cash, which is a far cry for the peak valuation of the company, which at one time glorious time was as big as Google or Apple, netting $125 valuation at the height of the first dotcom boom.

A whole generation of pioneering Internet users have been raised with Yahoo's home page as nascent web portal, just like now a whole generation is getting raised up with Google's minimalistic search box. Yahoo's website was anything but, though, as it offered news, weather, card games, and a detour towards its incessant groups and chat threads, which introduced millions of people to the dubious wonder that are internet forum discussions. In any case, Verizon is getting all that jazz for less than $5 billion, and might get some coin out of Yahoo's still-strong billion of active monthly users. 

As for the CEO Marissa Mayer, she didn't do much to cover the high expectations of her when she headed Yahoo, but is still landing well with a nice $50 million golden parachute to break the glass ceiling downwards this time. Everyone is pretty jubilant, with the usual boilerplate optimistic statements coming from all CEOs involved, though Verizon isn't getting Yahoo's, say, Alibaba stake, or its cash, just the Internet and media part of the business. As part of the deal, Verizon will merge the Yahoo and AOL assets - it acquired AOL for $4.4 billion last year - under Marni Walden, its VP for Product Innovation and New Businesses organization.

source: Verizon