In a statement announcing the settlement, Verizon said:
“Given the internal changes to Marissa Mayer’s role with Yahoo resulting from the closing of the deal, Mayer has chosen to quit from Yahoo. Verizon wishes Mayer well in her future endeavors.”
In an open letter to Yahoo employees, Mayer said, “It’s been my great honor and opportunity to be a part of this team for the last 5 years. Together, we have rebuilt, reinvented, restored, and improved our products, our business, and our company.”
She also rattled off a list of other achievements, like Yahoo’s stock performance and reaching over 1 billion users per month.
Yahoo and Verizon previously stated Mayer would step down once the deal closed. That became official on Tuesday.
Mayer was hired in 2012 to turn Yahoo at times of instability and executive shakeups. Even though the stock performed well under Mayer, she mostly failed to put Yahoo in a position where it could rise on its own.
Under Verizon, Yahoo will merge with AOL into a new company called Oath, which will oversee the various media properties like Huffington Post, TechCrunch, and Engadget. AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong will be the CEO of Oath.
She quit because Verizon’s $4.48 billion acquisition of Yahoo has officially closed, netting her a $23 million payout.
At a conference in London, Mayer said one of the things she was seeing forward to in her post-Yahoo life was using Gmail again.
Presumably, as CEO of Yahoo, she had to use Yahoo Mail.
Before joining Yahoo, Mayer worked at Google for over 13 years, managing several products such as search and Gmail.
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