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Verizon utters solemn Oath: Yahoo! will remain Yahoo!
Purple Palace keeps its exclamation mark under Alphabetical umbrella
Logo Watch After a brief social media flurry, Yahoo! has spiked speculation that it's about to lose its name.
The errors started with Business Insider, where “there's going to be a new name after the acquisition” speculation was given wings by a perhaps-badly-timed Tweet from AOL CEO Tim Armstrong launching a brand called "Oath:" to cover the company's various media assets.
Billion+ Consumers, 20+ Brands, Unstoppable Team. #TakeTheOath. Summer 2017. pic.twitter.com/tM3Ac1Wi36
— Tim Armstrong (@timarmstrongaol) April 3, 2017
That led people to the assumption that Oath: was going to replace both the Yahoo! and AOL brands.
Armstrong has now cleared the air via Yahoo! Finance.
"Oath:" is to Yahoo! as Alphabet is to Google, he explained: “the name Verizon has chosen for the media division that will house Yahoo!’s media sites, AOL (including TechCrunch and Engadget) and Huffington Post … a typical house-of-brands strategy”.
It makes sense: insiders might view the Yahoo! brand as passé (and seriously damaged by repeated hacks), but Alexa puts the former in sixth place in its global top-500, and it would be rash to abandon the property for a branding exercise.
The Register might not have minded the change, since Oath: takes much less typing than Yahoo!
And look up there at the top of the story: we also get a new logo. ®