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$350m! shaved! off! sale! price! as! Verizon! swallows! Yahoo!

$4.48bn... cheap! (apols to Alfred E Neuman)

Yahoo! will be gobbled by Verizon for $4.48bn, $350m cheaper than the initial deal, apparently due to the damage done to the company's value by widely reported successful cyber-attacks.

Verizon slashed its acquisition offer in the wake of Yahoo! confessing to cyber-attacks, and the companies will now share the liability for damage of the attacks.

The attacks were widely considered to have damaged the company's valuation ahead of it shedding its search, email and messenger assets to Verizon, while its advertising technology tools will be gobbled by Verizon's AOL unit, according to Reuters.

Verizon had been nagging Yahoo! to cut its valuation after the latter admitted to a pair of cyber-attacks last year, in which hackers had broken into the web company's systems, and raided a database of more a billion Yahoo! customer accounts, swiping personal information and hashed passwords.

Intruders also snatched internal code that generates session cookies, allowing the miscreants to log into Yahoo! accounts without using any passwords, a detail Yahoo! disclosed in the company’s 10Q, filed in November 2016 , confirmed to the press a month later, and has now begun formally alerting customers about.

Both companies have announced that they expect the amended deal to close in Q2 of 2017, and according to Reuters the amended terms will see Yahoo! and Verizon "split cash liabilities related to some government investigations and third-party litigation related to the breaches."

Yahoo! will retain its responsibility for liabilities from shareholder lawsuits and Securities and Exchange Commission investigations. ®

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