Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is set to resign from her position following Verizon’s upcoming purchase of the company.
The company is also set to change its name to Altaba, following numerous controversies over the past few years, which included the hack and consequential leak of over 1 billion user account details.
“Only five board members will remain at Altaba: Tor Braham, Eric Brandt, Catherine Friedman, Thomas McInerney and Jeffrey Smith” reported TechCrunch. “The rest of Yahoo’s board, including CEO Marissa Mayer, will step down from the newly-formed company. Mayer may be tapped for a role in Yahoo’s integration at Verizon, but her position has yet to be announced.”
“The news of the name change comes in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission” TechCrunch continued. “The filing is an indication that Verizon is moving forward with its purchase of Yahoo, which disclosed multiple security breaches last year affecting more than 1 billion users. Verizon reportedly considered asking for a discount on the $4.8 billion deal after the breaches were disclosed, and a discounted price may still be announced before the deal closes.”
In December, it was revealed that over one billion Yahoo users had been affected by a hack, just months after a previous hack was announced by the company.
In both incidents, users had their names, email addresses, dates of birth, security questions and answers, phone numbers, and hashed passwords stolen by hackers, including the details of over 150,000 government employees.
Yahoo was reportedly aware of the first large hack, which led to over 500 million account details being stolen, in 2014, however they failed to announce the incident to the public until late 2016.
Following both hacking incidents, and the revelation that Yahoo had been secretly scanning user emails for U.S. intelligence agencies, Verizon reportedly sought a significant discount on their purchase of the company.
Mayer’s tenure has been controversial, with the CEO facing a lawsuit last year that claimed she had purposely purged male employees.
Last year, several employees of Tumblr, the popular micro-blogging platform owned by Yahoo, also claimed that Mayer’s company caused the decline of the social network.
In January 2016, Mayer also a faced backlash after making a joke to employees about the number of layoffs at the company.
“No layoffs… this week!” joked Mayer, in response to questions raised by concerned employees, making news headlines around the world.
Shortly after her joke, Breitbart News Senior Editor Milo Yiannopoulos declared that Marissa Mayer had “become a symbol of Silicon Valley’s disastrous tokenism,” while Breitbart reporter John Hayward predicted “the end of an era” for Yahoo and Mayer, adding that her “judgement day” was approaching.
It is currently unknown as to how much Verizon has offered to pay for Yahoo, but it is expected to be less than the original $4.8 billion offer.
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.
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