Under Verizon (2017–2021) A year after the completion of the AOL acquisition, Verizon announced a $4.8 billion deal to acquire Yahoo's core Internet business, to invest in the Internet company's
search engine,
news,
finance,
sports,
video,
emails and
Tumblr products. Yahoo announced in September and December 2016 two major
Internet security breaches affecting more than a billion customers. As a result, Verizon lowered its offer for Yahoo by $350 million to $4.48 billion. The AOL deal and subsequent Yahoo purchase were led by Verizon's management team, including Lowell McAdam (CEO), Marni Walden (EVP Product) and
Tim Armstrong. Two months before closing the deal for Yahoo, Verizon announced it would place Yahoo and AOL under an umbrella named Oath. The deal closed on June 13, 2017, and Oath was launched. Upon completion of the deal, Yahoo CEO
Marissa Mayer resigned. Also in April 2018, Verizon sold
Flickr to
SmugMug, for an undisclosed amount. In May 2018, Verizon and
Samsung agreed to terms that would preload four Oath
mobile apps onto
Samsung Galaxy S9 smartphones. The agreement includes Oath's Newsroom,
Yahoo Sports,
Yahoo! Finance, and
go90 mobile video apps (closed in July 2018), with integration of native Oath advertisements into both the Oath apps and Samsung's own Galaxy and Game Launcher apps. On September 12, 2018, it was announced that
K. Guru Gowrappan would succeed Tim Armstrong as CEO, effective October 1. On December 3, 2018, the company banned "adult content" from Tumblr effective December 17, 2018. The ban led to objections that it harms the LGBTQ community, sexual abuse survivors, sex workers, adult content blogs, and other bloggers. The ban followed Apple's removal of the Tumblr app from the App Store because Apple objected to child pornography. Some speculated Tumblr's ban was an attempt to regain access to the App Store. In December 2018, Verizon announced that it was cutting 10% of Oath's workforce and would write down the value of the business by $4.6B. Verizon management blamed competitive pressures and that the business never achieved the anticipated benefits. The move wiped out all of the goodwill on the balance sheets that accompanied the acquisitions. On January 8, 2019, Oath was renamed Verizon Media. In November 2020, Verizon sold
HuffPost to
BuzzFeed. in an all-stock deal, remaining minority shareholder in BuzzFeed. the company employed about 10,350 people. It reported $7.4 billion revenue in 2020.
As Yahoo (2021–present) On May 3, 2021, Verizon announced that the Verizon Media would be acquired by
Apollo Global Management for roughly $5 billion, and would simply be known as Yahoo following the closure of the deal, with Verizon retaining a minor 10% stake in the new group. The acquisition was completed on September 1, 2021, with the company now known as Yahoo Also in May 2021, Yahoo shut down the
Yahoo Answers service, which had been operational since 2005. On September 10, 2021,
Jim Lanzone, who had been CEO of
Tinder, was named CEO of Yahoo, succeeding Gowrappan. Yahoo acquired start-up The Factual in August 2022 to add algorithmically generated accuracy ratings to Yahoo News stories. In October 2022, Yahoo announced it would buy nearly 25% of
Taboola, becoming its largest shareholder. The 30-year contract gave Taboola rights to sell native advertising across Yahoo's sites. In 2023, Yahoo introduced Backstage, a product allowing advertisers to purchase publisher inventory directly from Yahoo's
demand-side platform (DSP) without needing a
supply-side platform. Within one year, 82% of advertisers buying through the Yahoo DSP had used Backstage. In April 2023, Yahoo acquired Wagr, a peer-to-peer sports betting app, integrating it into Yahoo Sports. Yahoo also acquired CommonStock, a social platform for retail investors, in August 2023. Yahoo Creators, a publishing platform giving influencers a share of ad revenue, launched in March 2024. By July 2025, the program included 135 creators. Yahoo acquired AI news tool
Artifact in April 2024, incorporating its technology into an updated version of the Yahoo News app that debuted two months later. In August 2025, with the possibility of regulators requiring the
Google Chrome web browser to be sold, Yahoo Inc was one of three companies (alongside
Perplexity and
OpenAI) that were in talks to acquire Chrome. However, a sale was not required by regulators and any deals talks were called off. In October 2025, Yahoo reached a $1.5 billion deal to sell AOL to the Italian conglomerate
Bending Spoons. The purchase was quietly completed in January 2026. == Brands ==