oath, verizon, yahoo

Out of the blue, the widespread rumor mill started discussing an oath that was being pledged for the transformation of our interwebs. And now, we know what the oath will be. Verizon has announced today that the combined entity of Yahoo and AOL will be named as ‘Oath’, once the $4.48 billion acquisition of the former is completed in this very quarter.

I know, you might be thinking that Verizon is actually a little late to the April Fool’s Prank party and we believed the same. But, that is not the case here. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has taken to Twitter today to confirm that the combined entity of the two internet giants will be rebranded to – yeah, you guessed it right – Oath. And that’s it. There is currently no more information about this merged entity, except for a full load of speculations and rumors.

Well, Oath might not be the worst name for a business ever, but it is definitely high up there in the ranks. It still does not make it past you — Tronc (the rebranded name for Tribune Publishing). It doesn’t. The remaining part of Yahoo, which is owned by Alibaba (15 percent) and Yahoo Japan (35.5 percent), has also been renamed to Altaba. Marissa Mayer has already foregone her chief executive role at the company and her responsibilities have been handed over to board member Thomas McInerney.

Verizon still seems to be a little sane with the naming process, even though it has picked up an internet giant with issues — especially the ones you cannot turn a blind eye to.

The telecom giant had confirmed the original $4.83 billion acquisition of the core assets of the suffering internet giant Yahoo back in July. And that’s when the things went completely haywire at Yahoo as it revealed their server had been breached and the personal info of over 1.5 billion user accounts has been stolen in two hacking attempts back in 2013 and 2014. This was combined with reports that it was also colluding with intelligence agencies, allowing them to sift through everyone’s email data to trace terrorists.

With regards to the same, Yahoo was faced with immense backlash and Verizon was mulling over letting the deal go completely. But, the telecom giant pursued a discount on the originally planned price and settled for $350 million less due to the materialistic effects of the security breaches. This $4.48 billion transaction includes Yahoo’s search, content, ad-tech, and mail-related businesses.

But, let us take one moment to discuss what exactly could’ve been the thinking behind naming the company Oath. The most plausible reason could be that Verizon, and especially Yahoo, employees might be taking the oath to finally work towards protecting their new internet entity from any further weakness and random breaches. The official announcement for this rebranding, which still contains a punctuation, is expected to be rolled out sometime next week.

Further, the interwebs are flooded with reports surrounding the rebranding. Yahoo Finance suggests that Verizon will not be diluting the widely known Yahoo brand under the aforementioned process. Instead, as Armstrongs’s tweet mentions, Oath will most likely be an ‘umbrella’ entity with the 20+ brands that includes AOL (and its entities) and Yahoo ( and its entities as well). Also, a Recode report suggest that former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer will not continue with the company. Armstrong will be heading this combined entity.

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