Huh, Verizon has sold Yahoo and AOL. For half of what they paid for them…

Huh, Verizon has sold Yahoo and AOL.

Verizon sells AOL and Yahoo for about half of what it paid

For half of what they paid for them. 🤦‍♂️

To a private equity firm. 😬

Flickr and Tumblr REALLY lucked out that Verizon put in the effort to look for a photo-sharing company and a blogging company to sell them to instead of just muddling along with no idea what to do with them until they just wanted to unload them.

On Wandering.shop
Expanded on K2R: Ya-who? Flickr and Tumblr Were Lucky!

This is promising: SmugMug has bought Flickr & plans to “maintain Flickr as a standalone community…”

This is promising: SmugMug has bought Flickr & plans to “maintain Flickr as a standalone community of amateur and professional photographers and give the long neglected service the focus and resources it deserves.” (quote from article)

Now I don’t have to worry about Verizon shutting it down!

Exclusive: Flickr bought by SmugMug, which vows to revitalize the photo service

On Photog.Social

And the Flickr Q&A

On Photog.Social

Graphic showing consolidation in the US telecommunications industry

Interesting timeline.

Consolidation in the Telecommunications Industry – Graphic

AT&T’s proposed $39 billion purchase of T-Mobile USA would cap two decades of deal making that has left the U.S. telecom industry with just a handful of major players. Today’s AT&T…

The US government broke up the AT&T monopoly in the early 1980s, leaving the original AT&T doing little more than long-distance service. NYNEX, US West, Pac Bell and the rest were all separate companies until they started buying each other up again.

Looking back at it, what I find weird is that while Pacific Telesis ended up as part of AT&T, and MCI ended up as Verizon, their wireless divisions ended up owned by the opposite companies.

Now I know why AT&T’s website couldn’t figure out whether our future address can get…

Now I know why AT&T's website couldn't figure out whether our future address can get U-Verse. The city's phone service is handled by Verizon. (And yes, FIOS is available!) You'd think someone would program it to say, “Sorry, AT&T does not service this area” instead of, “I don't recognize that address. Would you like us to research it and get back to you in 2 weeks?”

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