Yahoo Acquisition Offer Lowered by $350M Following High-Profile Hacks

Recent data breaches at Yahoo have not gone unnoticed, most importantly by Verizon who has announced plans for the company’s acquisition for $4.83 billion in July 2016. The offer has since been lowered by as much as $350 million with Verizon paying $4.48 billion in cash, following the revelation of these security breaches. In September 2016, Yahoo disclosed details of a 2014 security breach which affected 500 million accounts. Shortly after in December 2016, Yahoo disclosed another security breach which happened in August 2013 resulting in the exposure of names, emails, and hashed passwords of over a billion users.

It has been suggested that Verizon was considering dropping out of the deal entirely after the revelations or was seeking a discount of over a billion before settling for $350 million and sharing legal responsibilities as well as regulatory liabilities that will inevitably stem from these security breaches. There is currently a class-action lawsuit against Yahoo in Canada and multiple suits are also expected to go on trial in the United States in 2017 related to these security breaches.

Verizon has purchased AOL in June 2015 for $4.4 billion and the telecommunications company has announced of plans to integrate Yahoo with that previous acquisition. The New York based Verizon wants Yahoo’s billion user count for its expansion into mobile media and advertising ventures. Although the Yahoo name may not be as powerful as it once was in the 90s, the range of web properties that the acquisition avails Verizon allows them to seek greater advertising opportunities and be able to deal with marketers directly via Yahoo’s Gemini Ad platform. The Yahoo acquisition also provides Verizon the ability to better track advertisement via Yahoo’s Flurry analytical suite as well as take advantage of Yahoo’s huge cache of content for its gigantic mobile network.