Verizon has taken over Yahoo, completing a $US4.5 billion ($A6 billion) deal that will usher in a new management team to attempt to wring more advertising revenue from one of the internet's best-known brands.
Tuesday's closure of the sale ends Yahoo's 21-year history as a publicly traded company.
It also ends the nearly five-year reign of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who isn't joining Verizon. She will walk away from Yahoo with a compensation package currently worth about $US125 million ($A166 million), including her severance pay and stock awards that will be fully vested with the deal's completion.
Yahoo's email and other digital services such as sports, finance and news will be run by Tim Armstrong, who has been running AOL since Verizon bought that company for $US4.4 billion ($A5.8 billion) two years ago. Armstrong will now be CEO of a new Verizon subsidiary called Oath, which will consist of Yahoo and various AOL services.
About 2,000 Yahoo and AOL workers are expected to lose their jobs as Verizon trims expenses and eliminates overlapping positions.
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Despite the company's struggles, Yahoo's stock more than tripled while Mayer was CEO, creating more than $US30 billion ($A40 billion) in shareholder wealth.
But most of those gains stemmed from Yahoo's stake in Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce company whose fortunes have soared while Yahoo faded. The Alibaba investment was engineered 12 years ago by Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang in what is now widely regarded as one of the savviest deals in internet history.
Yahoo's stock performance is the main reason most shareholders haven't complained too loudly about Mayer's lavish compensation package.
