Yahoo Bought At Damaged Goods Price, $350M Loss

Last year, Verizon was supposed to buy Yahoo for $4.83 billion. When news broke out regarding several security breaches at the tech company, negotiations became rocky. Now, the buying price is down $350 million, which is basically the equivalent of buying a used car that recently got dented. In short, Yahoo is priced as damaged goods.

The reduced buying price isn’t exactly unexpected as Yahoo has been experiencing massive public image problems over the last seven months, CNET noted. After hundreds of millions of user information getting compromised, an even bigger data leak was reported. During this period, it wouldn’t have been surprising if Verizon decided to pull the plug on the discussions completely.

The record-breaking data breach even placed the whole of the tech industry in a bind, with questions about security coming to the fore in the minds of users. Yahoo has been declining in size in years but it was still a significant force in the industry, after all. So it’s only natural that the idea that so many user information could be compromised and years would go by before they are reported was going to disturb users.

Verizon was able to use this development as leverage to save a few hundred million dollars when buying Yahoo, Digital Trends reports. On the other hand, considering just how serious the damage to Yahoo’s reputation has been, this might actually turn out to be a win for the company.

Many who were familiar with the transaction were actually thinking that Yahoo would have had to give up billions of dollars jut to push the deal through. Compared to that, giving Verizon a $350 million discount is Yahoo walking away smelling like roses.

As to the other aspects of the deal, it would seem that Yahoo’s homepage and certain services are going to be the same under Verizon. As such, users are encouraged to remain vigilant if they are still maintaining an account with the company.