Yahoo still has some skeletons in its closet.
By Maya Kosoff
When Marissa Mayer unceremoniously exited Yahoo this summer, she left in her wake a legacy of sorts: millions of dollars spent on expensive hires (including ad man Henrique de Castro, who was paid $109 million for 15 months of work); billions of dollars spent on acquisitions of tech companies, like Tumblr, that would be neglected; an expensive, ill-conceived attempt to build a talent-heavy newsroom; and the failure to prevent or adequately respond to three high-profile hacking incidents affecting more than a billion Yahoo user accounts last year.
It is this final issue that continues to plague Yahoo to this day, even after its awkward corporate marriage to another humbled 90s Internet relic, AOL, which together now operate under a Verizon umbrella unit with the unfortunate name of Oath. On Wednesday evening, a U.S. judge in San Jose, California, ruled that Yahoo must face litigation by victims of its three massive data breaches. Reuters reports that District Judge Lucy Koh rejected Yahoo's argument that the victims of the hacks didn't have standing to sue. "All plaintiffs have alleged a risk of future identity theft, in addition to loss of value of their personal identification information," she wrote in her
93-page decision. The result could be significant monetary liabilities for Verizon.