June 13 (UPI) -- Verizon Communications officially completed its $4.5 billion acquisition of Yahoo on Tuesday.
Verizon will combined its AOL assets into a new subsidiary called Oath and it will be led by AOL's CEO Tim Armstrong.
"We're building the future of brands using powerful technology, trusted content and differentiated data," Armstrong said in a statement. "Now that the deal is closed, we are excited to set our focus on being the best company for consumer media, and the best partner to our advertising, content and publisher partners."
Oath's 50 brands include the Huffington Post, Yahoo Sports, AOL.com, MAKERS, Tumblr, BUILD Studios, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Mail.
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Marissa Mayer, who had been the CEO of Yahoo and received a $23 million golden parachute from the company, has resigned.
"Verizon wishes Mayer well in her future endeavors," the company said in a release.
Verizon will compete with Facebook and Google for online advertising.
"The close of this transaction represents a critical step in growing the global scale needed for our digital media company," said Marni Walden, Verizon president of Media and Telematics in a statement. "The combined set of assets across Verizon and Oath, from VR to AI, 5G to IoT, from content partnerships to originals, will create exciting new ways to captivate audiences across the globe."
Verizons employs 161,000 people and made $126 billion in revenues in 2016, with 113.9 million retail connections in its mobile business.
Tech Crunch, which is part of AOL, reported last week that Oath plans to cut around 15 percent of all staff.
Last May, Verizon announced plans to buy Yahoo's core Internet business. The deal was complicated after Yahoo disclosed two massive security breaches affecting more than 1 billion users. It wound up cutting the price by by $350 million and to split the cost of any legal liabilities resulting from the breaches.
The remaining Yahoo assets -- mostly investment holdings in Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce company -- will be renamed Altaba.
Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale Calif., was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994 during the early days of the Internet. It became known for its search engine and content. At one time it had a market value that topped $100 billion.
Yahoo, which had an exclamation point in its name, become known for its "Do you Yahoo!?" commercials.
Verizon, with headquarters in New York, was originally Bell Atlantic, one of the seven so-called Baby Bells that were forced to be broken up from American Telephone & Telegraph Company in 1982 in an antitrust suit
