The Internet is getting ready to welcome a new company this summer. Oath: That's the name Verizon has chosen for the merger of Yahoo and AOL.
The new name isn't such a bad idea, because the names AOL and Yahoo may have a history, but with Yahoo's breaches and data leaks and AOL's mistakes over the past decade, the new brand name was probably necessary.
The name change was announced by Tim Armstrong, Verizon's head of AOL, with the following tweet:
Billion+ Consumers, 20+ Brands, Unstoppable Team. #TakeTheOath. Summer 2017. pic.twitter.com/tM3Ac1Wi36
— Tim Armstrong (@tim_armstrong) April 3, 2017
The new Oath name will apply to Verizon's digital media division once the Yahoo acquisition closes in the coming months.
The $4.48 billion deal is expected to close by the end of June 2017, although it could close much sooner.
The Huffington Post reports, however, that the new company Oath will be an umbrella name, like Google's Alphabet. Yahoo and AOL will exist and continue to operate to some extent.
Verizon has previously acknowledged that a large part of Yahoo's value lies in its relationships with its customers, especially its Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports services, which are still quite popular. The AOL Mail and AOL.com divisions are also still popular with some users.
Let's see, will Yahoo ever become the company it once was? Personally, I'm sure that just a new brand name is not enough.
