United States broadband telecom company Verizon Communications is expected to announce plans to buy the core internet business of a struggling Yahoo Inc on Monday, officials told Bloomberg. The deal, which involves buying Yahoo’s real estate holdings, is valued at around $4.8 billion (approximately Rs 32,000 crore). Yahoo will keep its stakes in Alibaba Group Holding and Ltd, Yahoo Japan Corp, as well as some patents, together worth $ 40 billion (Rs 2.6 lakh crore) the report added.
According to the New York Times, Yahoo still received 1 billion visitors a month, but this is not enough for the once thriving internet company to survive. At its highest, Yahoo was worth $125 billion (Rs8.4 lakh crore) in January 2000. The company, set up in 1994, thrived in the late 90s and early 2000s through its search, news, shopping and email ventures. However, with the advent of Google and Facebook, it has not been able to keep up.
Verizon is one of the biggest telecom companies in the US. It owns another once-popular internet company – AOL – which used to be one of Yahoo’s key competitors. The company is expected to combine Yahoo’s operations with AOL’s. Yahoo’s Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer (pictured above) is expected to leave the company after the deal is completed, having been unable to turn its fortunes around.
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