Catch News
Switch to
Catch News
Switch to
 
 
Home » Science & Technology » End of the road: Yahoo merges with AOL to become Oath. Marissa Mayer to exit
 

End of the road: Yahoo merges with AOL to become Oath. Marissa Mayer to exit

Sahil Bhalla | Updated on: 4 April 2017, 13:07 IST
(Arya Sharma/Catch News)
TWEET THIS
Verizon's new subsidiary to be called Oath. It's a merger of Yahoo and AOL. Ill-fated names FTW!
Yahoo + AOL somehow equals #Oath. Is the new Verizon subsidiary's name worse than Tronc? Just maybe

Last June, media giant Tribune Publishing rebranded bizarrely as Tronc. Now, the tech world is set to be graced with another bizarre name, courtesy of Verzion. After Verizon closes its deal of Yahoo's core assets, the new company, a merger of Yahoo and AOL, is going to be called Oath. Nobody knows where the ill-fated name came from, after all, quite what an oath has to do with either Yahoo or AOL is anyone's guess.

“In the summer of 2017, you can bet we will be launching one of the most disruptive brand companies in digital,” AOL said in a statement. If everything goes according to plan, soon people will be checking Oath Mail for their daily dose of spam and Oath News for curated news from across the web. The deal was delayed due to Yahoo's recent hacking disaster and the decline in business.

AOL's properties include the Huffington Post, Engadget, MovieFone, MapQuest, TechCrunch, and some other media sites. Yahoo mainly has Tumblr, Flickr and some media sites along with Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Fantasy Sports. The new company will be overseeing more than 20 brands and over a billion customers, presuming they continue to take a company named Oath seriously enough to keep using it. Yahoo's Asian assets are not being sold to Verizon and will also be getting a new name. That name is Altaba Inc, which isn't too much better than Oath.

Verizon's acquisition of Yahoo’s assets doesn't come cheap. It's expected to cost about $4.48 billion. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2017 and, as Business Insider reports, that could be "on or before April 24".

According to sources at Recode, Marissa Mayer will not be continuing with the new company. Instead, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong is expected to be "Oath-in-Chief". Mayer has not been speaking much publicly and terms of her departure aren't yet known.

Twitter users, however, were not interested in these details, choosing instead to mock the new name mercilessly:

However, no matter how badly this name change goes, it will never be as funny as Tronc:

First published: 4 April 2017, 13:07 IST
 
Sahil Bhalla @IMSahilBhalla

Sahil is a correspondent at Catch. A gadget freak, he loves offering free tech support to family and friends. He studied at Sarah Lawrence College, New York and worked previously for Scroll. He selectively boycotts fast food chains, worries about Arsenal, and travels whenever and wherever he can. Sahil is an unapologetic foodie and a film aficionado.
VAMP