Verizon to cut 2,000 jobs at Yahoo and AOL

Around 14,000 people work at AOL and Yahoo and the cuts would represent about 15% of the staff at the 2 units.

US wireless company Verizon is expected to cut about 2,000 jobs from AOL and Yahoo units when it completes the $4.48bn (£3.52bn) acquisition of Yahoo's core business next week.

It is estimated that around 14,000 people work at AOL and Yahoo and the cuts would represent about 15% of the staff at the two units. Most of the jobs are in California, whereas some are outside the US, a source told Reuters.

Although the Verizon-Yahoo agreement was announced in February, the closing deal was delayed because the companies assessed the fallout from two Yahoo data breaches.

In December 2016, Yahoo disclosed the largest breach in history when it said that more than 1 billion user accounts were compromised in August 2013. This came after another revelation that close to 500 million accounts were attacked in a 2014 breach.

Yahoo shareholders on Thursday approved company's sale, which is expected to be completed on Tuesday.

Verizon is combining Yahoo's search, email, messenger assets and advertising technologies with its AOL unit. The company hopes mobile video and advertising would be its new sources of revenue.

Yahoo still remains one of the largest properties on the internet, with hundreds of millions of customers using its email, finance and sports offerings.

Verizon is rebranding AOL and Yahoo as Oath, led by AOL chief executive officer Tim Armstrong.

It is planning to combine Yahoo's 200 million monthly visitors and AOL's 150 million monthly users with its own 100 million wireless subscribers to offer more targeted services for advertisers.