Verizon reportedly agrees to buy Yahoo for $5 billion

Verizon had emerged in recent days as the front runner for the beleaguered internet company. The deal was expected to be formally announced before markets open on Monday.

Yahoo is expected to sell its email service and news, finance and sports websites in addition to its advertising tools under pressure from shareholders fed up with a downturn in the company’s revenue during the past eight years.

The sale would also mark the end of Yahoo as an operating company, leaving it only as the owner of a 35.5 percent stake in Yahoo Japan, as well as its 15 percent interest in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Those two stakes account for most of Yahoo’s $37 billion market capitalization.

The deal will end months of uncertainty about Yahoo’s future after the company announced plans to review strategic alternatives in February.
Yahoo was not immediately available, and Verizon declined to comment.

LOSING GROUND TO COMPETITORS
Started in 1994 by Stanford graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo, Yahoo in its early years was the destination of choice for many making their first forays into the World Wide Web. The company soared and then crashed in the first dot-com bubble before emerging as one of the few internet companies with substantial revenues and profits.

By 2008, Yahoo was fending off a contentious takeover bid from Microsoft Corp and struggling to define its mission.

That question was never really answered, leading to years of management instability and shifting priorities. Google, Facebook Inc, Amazon.com Inc and a host of new companies, meanwhile, claimed much of the territory that might have been Yahoo’s.