Verizon, Yahoo set to announce $4.8 billion deal

An agreement to sell Yahoo’s sprawling portfolio of sites like Yahoo News, Flickr and Tumblr would mark the conclusion of a tough four years for CEO Marissa Mayer during which she tried and largely failed to breathe life into Sunnyvale’s ailing Internet giant. The company announced in February that it would look into selling in an effort to separate its challenged operations from its valuable investments in Asian Internet companies Alibaba and Yahoo Japan. [...] Verizon, AT&T, Quicken Loans co-founder Dan Gilbert and several private equity funds bid for the company. Technology news site Recode reported Saturday that Yahoo had informed other bidders that Verizon had won the auction. AOL’s video content, programmatic advertising and news sites like The Huffington Post and TechCrunch would help Verizon gain a footing in an estimated $600 billion global advertising industry, Verizon said at the time of the AOL deal. Yahoo’s content business, which includes Yahoo News and Yahoo Sports and a host of less-successful ventures, may prove far less useful than its advertising sales force and technology, Giusto said. While a youth-targeted content producer may appeal to Verizon, it already has a few of its own brands that reach Millennials, including AOL’s Huffington Post and TechCrunch. Verizon is more likely to keep Mozilla than a buyer like Microsoft or Google, both of which have their own search offerings and Internet browsers. In April, the company settled a dispute with activist investor Starboard Value, which favored a sale, by giving the hedge fund four board seats. While Verizon is likely to fold Yahoo’s Internet sites into its existing media operations, it’s not clear how Verizon executives might reverse Yahoo’s long-declining popularity. On Monday, Yahoo reported a 19 percent year-over-year decline in revenue, excluding traffic acquisition costs like the payments it makes to Mozilla, in the second quarter.