14 DAY TRIAL // Watch out! The Internet is getting ready to welcome a new company this summer - Oath. That's the name Verizon chose for the result of merging Yahoo and AOL.
The Internet's reaction to the naming decision is, as you'd expect, not that great, as many find it boring. At the very least, there was a history tied to the names AOL and Yahoo. On the other hand, given Yahoo's data breaches and AOL's slow walk into oblivion over the past decade, maybe it's not that bad of an idea.
The announcement about the name change was made by Tim Armstrong, Verizon's chief of the AOL division. "Billion+ Consumers, 20+ Brands, Unstoppable Team. #TakeTheOath. Summer 2017," reads the tweet he sent out just a few hours ago.
The new brand will apply to the digital media division of Verizon once the Yahoo acquisition is closed in the next few months. The $4.48 billion deal is expected to finally reach its end by the end of June, although it could very well happen sooner.
An umbrella
The Huffington Post says, however, that Oath will only be an umbrella name, much like Alphabet is for Google now. Yahoo and AOL will live on to an extent, and the companies will continue to operate.
Verizon has admitted in the past that much of Yahoo's value lies in the relationship it has with its customers, especially services like Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports, which are quite popular still. AOL Mail and AOL.com are also still somewhat popular among some users.
It's unclear why they would choose "Oath" out of all options available, but the Internet will continue to make fun of the name until the end of the world. On the plus side, there have been worse rebrands than Oath in the past, so at least they don't take the cake for this one.