Yahoo Sold To Verizon…

…And Yahoo Becomes Just Another Footnote In The History Of The World Wide Web.

Yes that’s right, Yahoo, the once ruling overlord of the World Wide Web has sold its core internet business properties to Verizon for $4.83 billion in cash.

The Yahoo logo is shown at the company’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, California April 16, 2013. The company will release its quarterly results on Tuesday. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith

The news marks an ignoble end to a company that at the height of the original dotcom bubble had the funds to spend almost $10 billion itself buying nascent competitors Broadcast.com and Geocities.

In an ironic twist of fate, Yahoo decided to pass on the opportunity to buy 2 upstart young companies when it had the chance.  Those 2 missed opportunities?  Facebook and Google….

Importantly, Yahoo has not sold off its ‘risky’ $1 billion 2005 investment in Chinese start up Alibaba.  Yahoo’s current stake is currently worth $30 billion, and the investment was so successful, that it became more profitable than the business Yahoo was in itself.  Buying shares in Alibaba is also part of the reason that Yahoo has been able to stay in business so long as it could be continually prop up its web business despite not making a profit for several years in a row.

Yahoo’s agonising belly slide to the bottom of a mountain covered in broken glass, has to say the least been painful. When former tech giants fall from grace, they really plummet.

Yahoo now has but a minor percentage of the market it once held, and in recent times, nothing it did to try and stop its nosedive into obscurity could stop its decline.

Yahoo’s own search offering now holds only a tiny percentage of the market it once did, despite final CEO, former Google Executive, Marissa Mayer doing her best to plug the leaks in the sinking ship. Not that she should be too disappointed. Reports indicate that she is in lie for a $50 million payment from the deal.

So it isn’t all bad news for the company that started life as a university project in 1994…