Yahoo sold for £3.8bn to Verizon Communications

Yahoo, the US internet firm, which has more than a billion active users a month, is being acquired by American Telecoms giant Verizon Communications for nearly £3.8bn ($5bn) in cash. Yahoo will be merged with AOL another faded internet star, which Verizon bought last year. The price tag was much below the $44bn Microsoft offered for Yahoo in 2008 or the $125bn it was worth during the dot com boom. Verizon said the deal for Yahoo’s core internet business, would make it a successful global mobile media company.

With Yahoo, Verizon gains the Internet company 600 million active mobile users and its email service, Yahoo finance and Tumblr. Verizon can now actively take on the likes of Google and Facebook. AOL CEO, Tim Armstrong said the deal was about “unleashing Yahoo’s full potential” and creating a major mobile media player.

Together AOL and Yahoo  will have 25 brands including YahooMail, Flickr, Tumblr, Huffington Post and Techcrunch news sites.

Ms Mayer who took the helm at Yahoo in 2012 made little progress in returning the company to profit as the firm reported a $440, loss in the second quarter last week.