Yahoo to be named Altaba, Mayer to leave board after Verizon deal

Reuters ^ | Mon Jan 9, 2017 | 8:03pm EST | Aishwarya Venugopal

[Olog-hai]

Yahoo Inc. said Monday that it would rename itself Altaba Inc. and Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer would step down from the board after the closing of its deal with Verizon Communications Inc.

Yahoo has a deal to sell its core internet business, which includes its digital advertising, email and media assets, to Verizon for $4.83 billion.

The terms of that deal could be amended — or the transaction may even be called off — after Yahoo last year disclosed two separate data breaches; one involving some 500 million customer accounts and the second involving over a billion. …

[Olog-hai]

Just curious; will FR switch to a different search engine under the “search” feature or stick with Altaba/Verizon?

[A CA Guy]

What happens to the free yahoo,com email accounts?

[Olog-hai]

Article doesn’t say.

Bad enough that the new company will have Red Chinese front company Alibaba owning a 15 percent stake. That implies involvement in Verizon as well, UIM.

[Bullish]

No matter, Yahoo under any name is the same stupid Yahoos.

[Olog-hai]

This time with 15 percent Red Chinese ownership.

[Windflier]

What happens to the free yahoo,com email accounts?

If Verizon is smart (big crapshoot there), they won't change a thing, except maybe the corporate name.

Lots of familiar brands are now owned by bigger companies. Most of those companies were smart enough to leave the branding and essential products of their acquisitions alone.

[Vince Ferrer]

Yahoo Inc. said Monday that it would rename itself Altaba Inc.

Well, let's see. People at least know the Yahoo brand, even if they haven't been there since the early internet days. Altaba, what's that? Never heard of it. The value of Altaba will shrink down to nothing, because everyone will think Yahoo disappeared, and this will be the worst investment Verizon ever made.

Yes this was Melissa Mayer's office, with a bunch of toys and not much else in it. This is how Silicon Valley rolls, hire a bunch of students right out of college, pay them peanuts and work them to death. But give them bouncy balls to sit on at work and let them ride skateboards in the halls. Somehow, Yahoo turned out exactly the way you think it would, looking at the picture.

But at least there is one woman celebrating this takeover, because now Carly Fiorina looks like a good manager by comparison.

[Windflier]

"Yahoo Inc. said Monday that it would rename itself Altaba Inc."

Dumb name. No pizzazz. I hope they're not stupid enough to use it on the website. It'll be an instant fail.

[pepsionice]

Let us remember how Yahoo’s blog capability went in 2009. Instead of advancing....they just said that was it...wrapped it up and gave everyone a hundred-odd days to copy and paste their blogs elsewhere. Then terminated that service.

[Windflier]

If Yahoo screws up or terminates their email service, that will be the end of the company. They nearly killed it when Marissa Mayer came on as CEO, and they crammed a bunch of ridiculous changes down the user's throats.

It took months and months for the clown ass techno droids to reconfigure the email service back to the appearance and simple functionality their users were accustomed to. They never did restore some of the old features.

[rfp1234]

Alpaca was already taken.

[Windflier]

Alpaca was already taken.

As was AssclownsRus.com

[thoughtomator]

I hereby predict “alt tab out” is going to be a failure.

[Drago]

If it is anything like the Pacific Bell/SBCglobal/at&t merger/renames, you will keep your old e-mail name with new users getting the “Altaba.com” domain. Web mail look and download functionality may change under Verizon tho..

[cynwoody]

What happens to the free yahoo,com email accounts?

Probably nothing, if they know what's good for them.

E.g., I've had a Hotmail account since the previous millennium. It's my throw-away email address, which I give out when signing up for web services, etc., that don't matter (to me). It has over 75,000 emails in its Inbox, 99.99% have not been read and never will be.

Hotmail was launched on 4 July 1996 by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith. It was one of the first web-based email services. They invested $300k. It ran on Linux, naturally.

In 1999, they sold it to Microsoft for $400m.

Of course, the fact that it was powered by Linux was an embarrassment to its new owner. But, over time, that problem was fixed, and the property was folded into MSFT's online Outlook platform.

But my @hotmail.com email address still works.

And I don't care that I'm wasting Microsoft's iron oxide storing my spam!

[Ray76]

“Altaba”? The name alone will sink them.

[SoFloFreeper]

man, I hope Altaba fires some of the liberal editors or culls the ranks of the leftist spewers of vitriol.

I hate logging on for my mail sometimes because of the ghastly conservative-hating headlines that pop up.

Foul and disgusting.

[Brooklyn Attitude]

The name sounds muslim. That alone should kill it.

[Tallguy]

... so was ‘Alibaba’ — another Chinese dreck company.

[wtd]

Curiosity is increased regarding the new identity altaba. . .which disturbingly sounds like a contraction of al-Tabaa or al-Tabbaa - arabic origin?