businessbriefs
10:02in productionCh. 1 · The Breach Discount/ 10:02 · ceiling 15 min
Rise & fall

Yahoo Inc. (2017–present)

Jerry Yang & David Filo · 2006

Yahoo isn’t being revived — it’s being recycled.

Yahoo Inc. (2017–present) is not the original Yahoo!. It is a Delaware-incorporated media entity formed in 2006, acquired by Verizon in 2017 for $4.48 billion — reduced from $4.8 billion after two breaches affecting over a billion users. Verizon wrote down its combined AOL-Yahoo value by $4.6 billion in 2018 and rebranded it Verizon Media in 2019. In 2021, Apollo Global Management acquired 90% for $5 billion, reinstating the Yahoo name and appointing Jim Lanzone CEO. Its $7.4 billion 2020 revenue comes from advertising across vertically focused, high-traffic properties — but it has shed Tumblr, HuffPost, and AOL without replacing their scale or influence.

Rise & fallAdvertisingCybersecurityPlatformsAdvertising across the network →
Chapters & takeaways4
  1. 1:01
    The Breach Discount

    Verizon bought Yahoo for $4.48 billion after slashing its offer by $350 million due to two billion-user security breaches.

  2. 2:32
    The $4.6B Write-Down

    Verizon wrote down Yahoo and AOL by $4.6 billion — half their combined value — and renamed the unit Verizon Media within a year.

  3. 4:12
    The Apollo Reset

    Apollo bought 90% of Yahoo for $5 billion in 2021, installing Jim Lanzone as CEO and reverting to the Yahoo name.

  4. 5:46
    The 2006 Entity

    Yahoo Inc. is legally distinct from the original Yahoo! — incorporated in 2006, headquartered in Manhattan, focused on media and online business.

Worth your time?

Yes. Study the whole thing.

3.5/ 5
What works
  • business/rise-and-fall
  • business/deals-and-ipos
  • business/finance
What does not
  • business/companies
  • business/company-stories
  • business/management
  • business/strategy
Study it if
  • business/rise-and-fall
  • business/deals-and-ipos
  • business/finance
Skip it if
  • business/founders
  • business/startups-and-venture
  • business/ideas
The written brief1 min read

What the company or idea is

Yahoo Inc. (2017–present) is a media and online business formed in 2006, headquartered in Manhattan, New York, and restructured three times since 2017: first by Verizon, then by write-down and renaming, then by Apollo Global Management’s $5 billion acquisition.

How it actually makes money

Yahoo Inc. (2017–present) makes money from digital advertising across its owned-and-operated properties — news, finance, sports, email, and search — with revenue reported at $7.4 billion in 2020.

What works

Its core traffic — finance, sports, and news verticals — retains high-intent user engagement, supporting stable ad yield; acquisitions like Taboola stake and The Factual aim to layer data and recommendation tech atop that base.

What does not

Its repeated rebranding — Oath, Verizon Media, Yahoo — fails to restore scale or pricing power in digital advertising; it has divested Tumblr, HuffPost, and AOL while failing to grow audience share meaningfully.

What to take from it

The gap between Yahoo’s self-presentation as a creator- and AI-enabled media platform and its actual position — a fragmented ad-tech inventory aggregator with declining leverage — reveals how private equity repackages legacy assets without altering their structural weaknesses.

Is it worth your time

Yes — as a case study in asset stripping, brand erosion, and the financial mechanics of media consolidation under private equity ownership.

Same desk · Rise & fall4 of 52
10:44
DiDiCheng Wei · 2012DiDi is a Chinese mobility technology company founded in 2012 by Cheng Wei in Beijing. It offers ride-hailing, taxi dispatch, bike sharing, vehicle leasing, food delivery, automobile services, and electric vehicle development. It merged with Kuaidi Dache in 2015 and acquired Uber China in 2016. It listed on the NYSE in June 2021 and was delisted in June 2022 after a $1.2 billion fine and app removal over data security concerns.
11:21
Peloton InteractiveJohn Foley · 2012Peloton Interactive is an American exercise equipment and media company founded in January 2012 in New York City. It sells Internet-connected stationary bicycles, treadmills, and rowers equipped with touchscreens that stream live and on-demand fitness classes through a subscription service. Built-in sensors track metrics such as power output, providing real-time performance feedback and leaderboard rankings. Peloton charges $49.99 monthly for equipment-based access and $12.99 for app-only access. Its first bike sold on Kickstarter in 2013 at an early-bird price of $1,500; its first commercial Internet-connected bike launched in 2014. The company faced safety recalls (Tread+ in 2021, Bike PL01 in 2023), leadership changes (Foley stepped down as CEO in 2022, McCarthy resigned in 2024, Stern became CEO in 2025), and a sharp valuation decline—from $8.1 billion at IPO in 2019 to ~$1.3 billion by June 2024.
11:00
BlackBerry LimitedMike Lazaridis & Douglas Fregin · 1984BlackBerry Limited is a Canadian software company specialising in secure communications and IoT. It was founded in 1984 as Research In Motion (RIM) and developed the BlackBerry brand of wireless mobile devices from 1999 to 2016. After spinning off its mobile division into BlackBerry Mobile in 2016 — discontinued in 2020 — the company transitioned to providing software and services and holds critical software application patents. RIM was the first wireless data technology developer in North America and the first outside the Nordic countries to develop Mobitex connectivity products. In 1996, RIM introduced the Interactive Pager, the first two-way messaging pager. In 1999, RIM introduced the BlackBerry 850 pager, the first device to use the BlackBerry OS, which received push email from Microsoft Exchange Server using BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). Its introduction set the stage for enterprise-oriented products, such as the BlackBerry 957 in April 2000, the first BlackBerry smartphone.
11:14
Washington Mutual1889Washington Mutual collapsed on September 25, 2008, when the Office of Thrift Supervision seized its banking operations and placed them into FDIC receivership — the largest bank failure in U.S. financial history — following a $16.7 billion, nine-day bank run triggered by a credit rating downgrade and broader liquidity crisis. The FDIC sold the banking subsidiaries to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 billion, stripping the holding company of its core assets and leaving it with $33 billion in assets and $8 billion in debt; the holding company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy the next day in Delaware.
Up next in Business

BHP

1885 · 9:02

BHP is an Australian mining company, founded at Broken Hill in 1885, that today mines iron ore, copper and coal.

Play nextBack to Rise & fall
9:02