PRIVATE EQUITY OWNED
Yahoo
Includes Yahoo!, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo News
tech · Sunnyvale, CA
- PE Firm
- Apollo Global Management →
- Year Acquired
- 2021
Apollo bought the internet's former homepage for $5 billion, then fired 20% of the people who kept it running.
What They Did
- Apollo acquired 90% of Yahoo from Verizon for $5 billion in September 2021 — the same company Verizon had already failed to fix
- Laid off 1,600+ employees (20% of total workforce) in 2023, with the ad tech division losing more than half its staff
- Yahoo's in-house ad platform was shut down and replaced with a Taboola partnership — the company that pioneered 'you won't believe what happens next' clickbait
- Launched Yahoo Creators in 2024, paying outside influencers a 50/50 ad split to churn out lifestyle posts under the Yahoo News banner
Since the Acquisition
- The 'Around the Web' clickbait boxes now cluttering Yahoo's pages are all Taboola, the recommendation engine wired into every Yahoo site
- The pivot to creator-generated content means less fact-checked journalism and more SEO-optimized filler on Yahoo's homepage
- Yahoo News now fills its lifestyle feed through a 'Stories from Creators' section of outside influencers, not staff reporters
Sources
- Yahoo will lay off 20% of staff, or 1,600 people — TechCrunch(2023-02-09)
- Apollo's $5 Billion Bet on Yahoo Aims to Go Beyond Advertising — Bloomberg(2021-05-03)
- Apollo Funds Complete Acquisition of Yahoo — Apollo Global Management(2021-09-01)
- Yahoo to Lay Off 1,600-Plus Staffers, More Than 20% of Headcount, in Revamp of Ad-Tech Biz — Variety(2023-02-09)
- Yahoo and Taboola Announce Closing of Deal; 30-Year Strategic Partnership, Taboola to Power Recommendations for Yahoo — Taboola(2023-01-17)
- Yahoo News' next big source? Creators, who are getting ad revenue in exchange for articles — Tubefilter(2025-02-13)
- Publishers and content-rec links — Nieman Lab(2016-10-01)