Its official; Verizon has finally bought Yahoo for $4.5bn

The Yahoo shareholders approved it, and presumably the Verizon lawyers okayed it; the US telco finally has control of the former internet giant for a discounted $4.5 billion.

The new business unit, which will be named Oath, has a portfolio which contains the likes of HuffPost, Yahoo Sports, AOL.com, MAKERS, Tumblr, BUILD Studios, Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Mail. The objective of the unit will be to ‘build brands people love’, and if anyone can think of anything more generic please do let us know.

Since the acquisition was announced over 12 months ago, we’ve had the threat of a counter-bid from AT&T, monumental security breaches, rumours of Verizon favouring Twitter, a SEC investigation and cut throat negotiating skills. And this is only what was in the public domain; imagine what went on behind closed doors.

Has there ever been such a prolonged, potty and painful process to purchase a predominantly past-it and pitiful property for such a preposterous payment.

“We’re building the future of brands using powerful technology, trusted content and differentiated data,” said Tim Armstrong, former CEO of AOL, and now CEO of Oath

“We have dominating consumer brands in news, sports, finance, tech, and entertainment and lifestyle coupled with our market leading advertising technology platforms. Now that the deal is closed, we are excited to set our focus on being the best company for consumer media, and the best partner to our advertising, content and publisher partners.”

The new does also bring to an end one of the biggest ‘will they, won’t they’ sagas the telco industry has ever witnessed; a timeline which had the potential to compete with the likes of East Enders. All we needed was a fire, an unplanned pregnancy, and Marissa Mayer to become the landlady of the local pub, and you wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference

While Mayer has now found herself staring at the job boards, she has pocketed a small chunk of change from the drama. $23 million to be exact.

“Given the inherent changes to my role, I’ll be leaving the company. However, I want all of you to know that I’m brimming with nostalgia, gratitude, and optimism,” said Mayer in a Tumblr post.

“Looking back on my time at Yahoo, we have confronted seemingly insurmountable business challenges, along with many surprise twists and turns. I’ve seen our teams navigate these hurdles and mountains in ways that have not only made Yahoo a better company, but also made all of us far stronger.”

The post itself does look a little bit like an overly enthusiastic salesperson’s CV, so perhaps we should be surprised if Mayer is hitting the headlines at another tech company in the near future. Mayer certainly made waves with her previous employer Google, so maybe we’ll see a return to familiar, and much more enjoyable, stomping grounds.