Yahoo will be combined with AOL, another faded web pioneer, into a new division of Verizon called Oath, under the leadership of AOL’s chief executive, Tim Armstrong.
Oath has about 1.3 billion users who visit at least once a month, and Verizon hopes to use its range of content and create new forms of advertising to attract more viewers and marketers to the platform. The company also intends to cut costs, with plans to lay off about 2,100 people, or about 15 percent of Oath’s staff.
Yahoo’s chief executive, Marissa Mayer, will not join Oath. Although she failed to reinvent Yahoo for success in the mobile era, she was well compensated for her five years leading the company, earning an average of $1 million a week as Yahoo’s share price more than tripled and the value of its Asian investments soared.
Yahoo’s stockholders will retain shares in a new company called Altaba that will own its valuable investment stakes in Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan.
