Verizon announced its intention to acquire Yahoo for $4.83 billion in July this year. However, Yahoo revealed in September that it had encountered a major cyberattack which left personal information of hundreds of millions of users compromised. Verizon was then said to be evaluating its options but now that Yahoo revealed another hack which left more than one billion user accounts compromised, a new report claims Verizon is possibly thinking about giving up on acquiring Yahoo.
When the first Yahoo hack was revealed in September this year, Verizon general counsel said that it was a “material event,” and that it was something which would have kept Verizon from spending as much as it had committed to acquire Yahoo for. Reports suggested that Verizon wanted a $1 billion discount on its deal with Yahoo.
Yahoo confirmed a massive hack yesterday in which more than a billion user accounts were compromised. Bloomberg News reports that Verizon wants to push the price even lower now and it may even back out of the deal completely if it no longer makes sense.
The scribe mentions that this story is developing right now so there’s not much clarity surrounding this right now. Verizon hasn’t said anything to suggest that it’s giving up on Yahoo but it goes without saying that the company will be talking to Yahoo about how to proceed.
A spokesperson for Yahoo tells CNET that “We are confident in Yahoo’s value and we continue to work towards integration with Verizon,” while a spokesperson for Verizon said “As we’ve said all along, we will evaluate the situation as Yahoo continues its investigation. We will review the impact of this new development before reaching any final conclusions.”