Verizon is reported to be rebranding all of its consumer-facing media and web properties as Yahoo products while bringing out several new subscription offerings, all under the umbrella of Yahoo+.
Introducing Yahoo+ Subscriptions
Ultimately, Verizon wants to rebrand most of its media franchises as Yahoo products.
At the same time, Verizon is launching a subscription service dubbed Yahoo+. "Yahoo is the future of our consumer-facing brand," says Verizon Media's Joanna Lambert.
According to Verizon itself:
Yahoo Plus is a collection of individual subscriptions that take your Yahoo experience to the next level. Do you use Yahoo Mail? Subscribe to Yahoo Mail Plus and get added features like an ad-free inbox. Enjoy Yahoo Finance? Subscribe to Yahoo Finance Plus and get advanced data and expert analysis. Sports fanatic? Subscribe to Yahoo Fantasy Plus and get research tools and trade insight. Get more of what you love with Yahoo Plus.
Currently, these subscription services are available:
- Yahoo+ Mail+: $5/month
- Yahoo+ Fantasy: $8/year
- Yahoo+ Protect: Mobile ($5/month) and Home ($15/month)
- Yahoo+ Finance: Free ($0/month), Lite ($25/month or $250/year) and Essential ($35/moth or $350/year)
For further information about these subscriptions, visit the official Yahoo+ website.
Yahoo+ Perks
Most of the Yahoo+ subscriptions come with free trials. Some paid services come with limited ads and others with no ads at all. All paid offerings include such perks as 24/7 tech support, discounts when purchasing more eligible Yahoo+ subscriptions, and more.
Perks are unlocked with the purchase of an eligible Yahoo+ subscription at no added cost. In the future, Yahoo could bundle these paid services and offer them at a reduced price.
At the same time, some of the free offerings like News could get a paid tier. Yahoo News is "a significant and growing brand and business for us, especially as we have been focusing primarily on reaching younger generations," Lambert says.
For detailed information about all of the perks, read the official FAQ on the Yahoo website.
You'd be forgiven for thinking that no one in their right mind would pay to use Yahoo products. But according to a report from Axios, Verizon's media division already has three million people that pay for various Yahoo subscriptions, like Fantasy, Finance, and others.
That's a sizable business indeed.
Is Yahoo Rebranding Its Media and Web Properties?
Some of the existing offerings from Verizon are now available under a new banner. Verizon's media studio RYOT has been rebranded as Yahoo Ryot Lab, for example. Women's brand Makers is now known as Makers by Yahoo, which is now a part of Yahoo Life.
It's unclear whether Verizon's media brands like TechCrunch, AutoBlog, and Engadget will be rebranded as well. For the time being, these brands are now part of Yahoo's various categories---Autoblog has been integrated into Yahoo Autos while Engadget and TechCrunch are now part of Yahoo News and Yahoo Finance.
There will be also a brand new Yahoo Tech category in the future. "Over time, we will be moving non-Yahoo brands and centralizing them around Yahoo," according to Lambert. TechCrunch's editor-in-chief Matthew Panzarino says fans of the site should not worry whether TechCrunch would now become YahooCrunch or some such.
"That is not correct," Panzarino wrote on TechCrunch. "TechCrunch is a brand that, against all odds, has stood the test of time in a radically changing and challenging landscape."
Yahoo... an Early Internet Pioneer
Yahoo is the legendary internet brand founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo back in January 1994. One of the pioneers of the early Internet, Yahoo's fall from grace began in the early 2000s, coinciding with the sharp rise of the Google search engine.
In subsequent years, Yahoo was slowly but surely losing its relevancy and bleeding market share to Google. The downturn continued as Yahoo hired several unsuccessful CEOs to turn things around until Verizon acquired the company in 2017 for nearly $5 billion.