Fiber and furries

13 August 2019 By Robert Cyran Follow @rob_cyran

The wireless giant’s bet on internet advertising never made sense. The sad trajectory of high profile, low revenue Tumblr illustrates the divide. The site’s sale carries an embarrassing price tag. That’s another wake up call for Verizon to pull the plug on AOL and Yahoo.

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Verizon Communications said on Aug. 12 that its Verizon Media unit had agreed to sell Tumblr to Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com. The two companies did not indicate a price. Axios reported that it was around $3 million, citing sources familiar with the deal.

Yahoo bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion in 2013. In 2016, Yahoo wrote down about two-thirds of its purchase price.

Verizon bought Yahoo’s core business in 2017 for about $4.5 billion, combining it with AOL, which it had purchased for $4.4 billion in 2015. In 2018, Verizon wrote down $4.6 billion it spent to buy Yahoo and AOL.

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