Verizon buys Yahoo for $4.83B, marking end of an era

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Verizon is buying Yahoo for $4.83 billion, marking the end of an era for a company that once defined the internet.

It is the second time in as many years that Verizon has snapped up the remnants of a fallen internet star as it broadens its digital reach. The nation’s largest wireless carrier paid $4.4 billion for AOL last year.

Yahoo will be rolled into Verizon’s AOL operations and CEO Marissa Mayer may be reunited with AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, who worked with her as executives at Google for years and tried unsuccessfully to convince her to combine the two companies when they both remained independent.

“We have enormous respect for what Yahoo has accomplished: this transaction is about unleashing Yahoo’s full potential,” Armstrong said in a statement.

Most analysts expect the deal to end the four-year reign of Yahoo’s Mayer, a former Google executive who flopped in her attempts to turn around the Sunnyvale, California, company.

Mayer, though, told employees in a Monday email that she intends to stay, though she didn’t say for how long. “I love Yahoo, and I believe in all of you. It’s important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter,” she wrote.

Yahoo Inc., Sunnyvale, California, is parting with its email service and still-popular websites devoted to news, finance and sports in addition to its advertising tools under pressure from shareholders fed up with a steep downturn in the company’s revenue during the past eight years.

The slump has been deepening even though advertisers have been pouring more money into what is now a $160 billion market for digital advertising, according to research firm eMarketer.

Most of the money has been flowing to internet search leader Google and internet social networking leader Facebook, two companies that eclipsed Yahoo during its slide from an online sensation, once valued at $130 billion, to a dysfunctional also ran.