Following Verizon's purchase of Yahoo, the firm has decided to combine its newly purchased asset with another former internet giant: AOL.
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Tim Armstrong, the CEO of AOL, has announced that starting this summer the two companies will be merged and be called "Oath". "Billion+ Consumers, 20+ Brands, Unstoppable Team," Armstrong said in a tweet.
According to Business Insider the merged entities will be under the control of Marni Walden, the executive Vice President at Verizon.
"In the summer of 2017, you can bet we will be launching one of the most disruptive brand companies in digital," an AOL spokesperson told the publication.
While neither AOL or Yahoo retain as much web power as at their peaks, the firms still own more than 20 brands between them. These include TechCrunch, Tumblr, Flickr, the Huffington Post and Engadget. It's possible the combined users of these services add up to Armstrong's claimed "billion+" customers.
Verizon first announced plans to buy Yahoo's core internet business in July 2016 for a staggering $4.83bn (£3.6bn) but the deal was hit by a string of embarrassing, and it now seems costly, scandals involving data privacy at Yahoo.
Verizon revealed in a statement on February 21 that the acquisition would go ahead for $4.48 billion in cash, in the second quarter of 2017. The reduced price is $350m (£281m) less than the original offer. The companies have also agreed to “share certain legal and regulatory liabilities arising from certain data breaches incurred by Yahoo”.
“We have always believed this acquisition makes strategic sense,” Marni Walden, Verizon’s executive vice president and president of Product Innovation and New Businesses, said. “The amended terms of the agreement provide a fair and favorable outcome for shareholders. It provides protections for both sides and delivers a clear path to close the transaction in the second quarter.”
Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s CEO, added: “This transaction will accelerate Yahoo's operating business especially on mobile, while effectively separating our Asian asset equity stakes. It is an important step to unlock shareholder value for Yahoo, and we can now move forward with confidence and certainty.”
In September 2016, Yahoo confirmed 500 million customer accounts had been compromised in a suspected state-sponsored 2014 attack (this made an earlier admission that Yahoo had seen 200 million accounts breached seem insignificant). Then, in December, as a result of an investigation into the 2014 breach, it was found an additional 1,000,000,000 accounts had data stolen in 2013. One billion.
Earlier this month, Yahoo sent another wave of emails to users warning their accounts may have been breached, as part of the December disclosure. A flaw in Yahoo's mail service could have allowed a hacker to use a forged "cookie" created by software stolen from within Yahoo's systems to access accounts without a password.
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"Based on the ongoing investigation, we believe a forged cookie may have been used in 2015 or 2016 to access your account," the emails explain. Yahoo confirmed it was emailing users about a potential breach but didn't reveal how many had been hit. A statement from the company said it was informing all of those who had been affected.
Amid the fallout of the older data breaches, Verizon's deal was delayed as it negotiated the discount. As well as the reduced price, Verizon has secured an agreement on how liabilities over the security breaches will be split. Yahoo will take on the cost of half of all cash liabilities that transpire as a result of government investigations and third-party suits, and responsibility for shareholder lawsuits and US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigations.
A recent filing with the US SEC revealed that Verizon is only purchasing the publicly visible parts of Yahoo – the website, email, blogs and search engine. Verizon is not buying the parts of Yahoo that are essentially an investment holding company, with shares in Alibaba, Yahoo Japan and other firms.
The Verizon offer, made eight years after Yahoo turned down a $44 billion offer from Microsoft, followed a series of losses at the former internet giant, partially due to big expenditures like its $1 billion acquisition of Tumblr.
This article has been updated since it was first published.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
