Yahoo Becomes Altaba as Marrisa Mayer Steps Down

More than two decades later, Yahoo Inc. or Yahoo! is finally undergoing a name change, a brand makeover. Once the multi million dollar deal closes with Verizon, Yahoo will be henceforth known as ‘Altaba’.

The announcement was made last year and the deal will officially close in March 2017. The procedures are in full flow with top 6 administrators of the company stepping down once it goes through, one of them being the CEO of Yahoo! Marrisa Mayer. Along with Ms. Mayer, David Filo and Maynard Webb Jr. will also be leaving the company. Yahoo was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994 and Mr. Webb joined the company as a director and is now the chairman.

After the sale, most of the assets including Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Mail, etc. will go under the umbrella of Verizon except the two investment ventures of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (15%) and Yahoo Japan (35%) which will be publicly traded. As policy demands, the name Yahoo can no longer be used and thus the company will be renaming itself to “Altaba.”

Altaba comes from a conjugation of ‘alternative’ and ‘alibaba’. It is a seemingly good strategy to be linking with the Chinese e-commerce giant especially with the turmoils the brand has faced over the past few months. Following two massive breaches in their data that compromised private information of more than 1.5 billion people around the world, the Verizon deal is now at a rough patch. Also the rumours of Yahoo building a surveillance technology is keeping the Verizon management pondering over their decision. It remains to be seen if the deal will be totally off or there will be renegotiation of the 4.8 billion dollars. Eric Brandt, who joined Yahoo’s board last March and is the former Chief Financial Officer of Broadcom Corp., will become chairman of Altaba.