the big US wireless and landline telecom company,

headquartered in New Jersey,

a year ago bought one of the 1990's internet pioneers, AOL

for 4.4 billion dollars.

AOL had developed a digital advertising platform where ads were bought and sold,

that was small but growing fast and could turn into a challenger to the online dominance of Google and Facebook.

By buying Yahoo for 4.83 billion dollars in cash,

Verizon is doubling down on that bet.

Yahoo has 600 million monthly users who rely on its search engine

or visit its websites like Yahoo Finance and Tumblr.

While Verizon has an equity value of 230 billion dollars,

it's phone businesses have slowed down,

and it wants to get into creating digital content

and distributing ads that it can pair with its distribution businesses.

Yahoo was one of the first companies to help develop the internet in the 1990s

by creating one of the first organization systems for web pages.

It's market cap soared over 100 billion dollars during the Dot-Com Boom,

and even years later, in 2008,

it spurned a near 50 billion dollar acquisition attempt from Microsoft.

However, as social networks like Facebook were invented,

Google became the dominant search engine,

and Steve Jobs designed the iPhone,

Yahoo's offerings simply couldn't keep up.

In recent years, it has tried turning to acquisitions like Tumblr,

but the company seemed to be too far behind.

Selling the company is only part of the puzzle for Yahoo.

Its stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan are worth over 30 billion dollars.

It initially hoped to spin off the Alibaba shares in a new company,

but that risked a big tax bill.

After the Verizon sale,

the remaining Yahoo will have to decide how to dispose of those stakes,

without drawing the ire of the IRS.

For all its struggles,

Yahoo has been a constant source of corporate drama.

and even with the sale of its main businesses,

that isn't over yet.