Verizon Communications will create a new company called Oath after it completes its $4.5 billion acquisition of Yahoo and melds the troubled internet company with its AOL operations.
Oath will oversee Yahoo and AOL after the deal is completed. The Yahoo and AOL brands are expected to survive, although Verizon says it won't provide any details about its plans for Oath until this summer.
"You can bet we will be launching one of the most disruptive brand companies in digital," AOL said in a Monday statement.
Tim Armstrong, AOL's top executive, posted a tweet Monday indicating Oath will manage more than 20 different brands.
Verizon is counting on the combination of Yahoo and AOL to help it sell more digital ads, even though the two internet pioneers had been struggling on their own.
Yahoo originally agreed to sell its online operations to Verizon for $4.8 billion after years of unsuccessful attempts to boosts its revenue. It had to slash the price after discovering that two separate hacking attacks had stolen personal information from more than 1 billion user accounts.
The security breakdown marked the two biggest breaches in internet history, raising concerns that people might start using Yahoo less frequently and reduce the opportunities to show ads.
Verizon plans to take over Yahoo's email and other online operations sometime between now and June 30. After the deal closes, Yahoo's cash and lucrative stakes in Asian internet companies Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan will be controlled by another new company called Altaba.
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults — two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
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