Last year, Verizon came out and bought AOL which cost them $4.4 billion. Some thought that was a rather large sum for AOL, a company most hadn’t heard about in years. But AOL wasn’t some company that was dead and gone – much like Yahoo. AOL had purchased several news websites like Tech Crunch, Engadget and The Huffington Post. Furthermore, AOL’s advertising business is a big part of what Verizon wanted. As well as their video business, which both are now part of their over-the-top streaming service known as Go90.
Recently, Yahoo has been in trouble. Laying off workers, scaling back on their plans, and even saying that they are up for sale in the Q4 earnings call last week. Yahoo was a pretty big deal in the 2000’s. Almost everyone used Yahoo Mail or Yahoo Messenger. Lately, they have been turning to apps like Yahoo Weather, Flickr, News Digest and other apps. All of which are pretty popular, they even bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion in 2013. However, Yahoo is seeing hard times right now. And could open the door for Verizon to buy them, or at least some of their assets. Like AOL, Yahoo has a bevy of assets in video and advertising. Which would help the company leverage their Go90 service.
In an interview with CNBC’s Mad Money host Jim Cramer, Verizon’s CEO Lowell McAdam spoke about his company considering buying Yahoo. Stating that if they can get the right price “marrying up some of their assets with AOL and the leadership would be good.” After acquiring AOL, Verizon became a pretty big internet publisher, however if they were to buy Yahoo, they would be the internet’s biggest publisher, and by a pretty wide margin.
McAdam had stated before that the board of directors and himself were in talks with Yahoo, but nothing had materialized just yet. It looks like they are still in talks to acquire Yahoo, or at least a chunk of their assets which would help their business. If Verizon doesn’t pick up Yahoo, AT&T might. As they are looking to also get into their own streaming-service for mobile. And Yahoo could definitely help out Ma Bell with that.