Verizon Reportedly Wants $250 Million Discount On Yahoo Purchase Following Account Hacking Disclosures

Everyone loves a discount, especially when that discount ranges in the millions of dollars. Verizon is reportedly trying to reduce the $4.83 billion USD price tag for Yahoo, Inc. by $250 million. The renegotiation is in light of Yahoo’s disclosures of past security breaches.


Yahoo revealed three security breaches this past year. In May, the corporation disclosed that Russian hackers stole and traded on the black market information from more than 40 million Yahoo accounts. The information was mostly from American banking, manufacturing, and retail outfits. This past summer, a hacker known as “Peace” listed 200 million Yahoo accounts for 3 bitcoins or roughly $1,800 USD. In December, the corporation revealed that “an unauthorized third party, in August 2013, stole data associated with a broader set of user accounts.” This breach affected 1 billion users, of which over 150,000 were government employees. Yahoo has also been slapped with a class action suit for gross negligence in their data breaches.

Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer is currently under pressure to close the deal as quickly as possible. Verizon seriously considered nixing the deal completely after the latest security breach reveal. Many blame Mayer for failing to keep the corporation above water and thus preventing a purchase like this from happening in the first place. Mayer was also in charge of the corporation during the August 2013 and September 2014 breaches. Mayer has come under fire for potential sexism and for scanning customer emails on behalf of the government.


The deal is supposed to close at the end of the first quarter of 2017. Assuming the deal goes through, Yahoo's brands such as Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports would be integrated into Verizon-owned AOL. The rest of Yahoo would be renamed Altaba and would essentially function as an investment company. It is currently unclear what role the unpopular Mayer would play. At any rate, it is certainly clear that Verizon will not be paying the originally promised $4.83 billion for the Yahoo acquisition.