In 2015, Verizon took a big leap into the media and advertising industry with the purchase of AOL and Yahoo. Since then, however, the company has struggled to utilize the once-grand business entities to their full potential. Now, with the massive sale, Verizon closes the book on the company’s era in media, opening the door for a new company to make waves in tech. Verizon will still retain a 10% stake in the company — though the name will be changed from Verizon Media Group to simply Yahoo — and will be led by CEO Guru Gowrappan. Outside of this deal, Apollo has found itself in the news recently, and not for a good reason. The co-founder and former CEO Leon Black stepped down in March 2021, as reports surfaced that he had paid Jeffery Epstein, infamous sex offender, more than $157 million over the course of a five-year period. To be fair, the writing has been on the wall for a while now that Verizon was giving up on media. The company sold the Huffington Post to Buzzfeed in November 2020, and sold Tumblr March 2019. Verizon is even shutting down the delightfully random Yahoo Answers platform this week, a truly tragic loss for anyone that needs to know the answers to the world’s most misspelled questions. Simply put, Apollo is going to have its work cut out for it as far as turning these media entities into anything that even remotely resembles their former glory. In fact, maybe $5 billion was a good deal for Verizon after all.
