Yahoo and AOL to Become Oath After Verizon Combines Iconic Web Brands

Posted on April 4, 2017

Yahoo and AOL are two of the best known Internet brands. They would be on anyone's list of notable companies that were part of the early days of the Internet. Verizon has apparently decided to do away with both of these strong brand names and merge them into an entity named Oath.

The plans for Oath were first reported by Business Insider and later confirmed in a tweet by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. Armstrong says, "Billion+ Consumers, 20+ Brands, Unstoppable Team. #TakeTheOath. Summer 2017."

CNN/Money notes that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is not expected to be part of the Oath executive team. They also note that an AOL spokeswoman said, "In the summer of 2017, you can bet we will be launching one of the most disruptive brand companies in digital." CNN/Money also calls the Oath name a "one incredibly bland corporate name." Verge notes that this could mean people will be using Oath Mail and Oath News instead of Yahoo a few months from now.

It isn't clear why Verizon didn't decide to keep AOL or Yahoo. There hasn't been a press release so must information is speculation at this point. It could be that wanted a very short URL but Oath is longer than AOL. The Oath domain name is not in use but it appears to be owned by another party as of this writing, but that could change.