Image: Yahoo/Protocol
Can anyone make Yahoo cool again?

Good morning and May the 4th be with you! This Tuesday, what's next for Yahoo after being sold by Verizon, the crazy first day in Epic v. Apple and what to expect from Melinda Gates after her divorce from Bill.
(Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to get Source Code every day. And you can text with us, too, by signing up here or texting 415-475-1729.)
Tomorrow's newsletter is going to be a couple of hours late. Facebook's Oversight Board is planning to announce its kinda-thought-it-might-never-happen decision on what to do with Donald Trump's account. We'll be in your inbox as soon as that comes out, with all the latest on what happened and what it means.
Apollo Global Management just bought Verizon Media — basically Yahoo and AOL — for $5 billion, and plans to rename the company to Yahoo. (Shame about the name; it could've resurrected CompuServe or Netscape is all I'm saying.) And the sale is … essentially an admission of defeat from Verizon?
Verizon's plan for AOL and Yahoo once made some sense. When it bought the companies — AOL in 2015 and Yahoo in 2017 — the idea was to bring two giant brands together to form a third advertising giant next to Facebook and Google.
But this new deal has been a couple of years in the making. Verizon's thesis was the right one: Streaming did quickly come to dominate the internet. Yet in trying to buy its way to scale, Verizon bought two slowly dying brands, merged them into one, renamed the whole thing to Oath, and watched it all die even faster.
As for the new new new Yahoo? Apollo is now the third company to try and make the brand cool again. It's hard to know what, exactly, it will look like. "Apollo has a powerful vision that includes aggressively pursuing growth areas in commerce, content and betting," Vestberg said in a memo on Monday.
The appeal of the ad tech world may be stronger than ever, as the backlash against the Facebook-Google duopoly continues and as companies like Amazon and Roku prove there's plenty of digital ad money to go around. But Apollo will have to figure out what Yahoo is, what it isn't and whether anyone cares, or risk watching the company's value crash even further.
Day one at tech's trial of the year was … rocky. The tech setup didn't really work and the trial still hasn't really found a groove yet. But things are already rollicking. Here are four things to take away from the beginning of Epic v. Apple, courtesy of Protocol's Nick Statt and Ben Brody:
Bill and Melinda Gates said they're getting divorced. But there's little question over what she'll do with her personal fortune, according to Protocol's Issie Lapowsky and Biz Carson.
As she charts her own course apart from Bill, there's no reason to believe she'll stop now.
It's still unclear how the Gateses will divide their estimated $130 billion fortune in the divorce, but how Melinda will put the money to use won't be much of a question.
"I've been working at Intel on developer solutions for 24 years, and when I think about the hardware that we provide, what our customers ultimately want to do with it is turn it into solutions, or essentially create new magic," says Intel's Bill Pearson: "Developers provide the magic."
On Protocol | Enterprise: Spotify went all-in on Google Cloud, and VP of platforms Tyson Singer said it was all about speed and simplicity:
On Protocol: Charlotte Newman is suing Amazon over allegations of discrimination and harassment, and said the issues were company-wide:
Don't worry about the crazy Bitcoin price swings, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said:
STMicroelectronics CEO Jean-Marc Chéry said the chip shortage would permanently reshape supply chains, and customers would need to start holding inventory:
Samy Bengio is joining Apple to run an AI research unit. He joins from Google, which he left in the midst of its recent AI team turmoil.
Ajit Pai is a new visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, in addition to his gig at Searchlight Capital Partners.
Sony is investing in Discord, and the two companies are partnering to bring Discord into the PlayStation Network. Pretty sure that's the nail in the coffin of a Microsoft acquisition.
Vitalik Buterin is a crypto billionaire now, as the price of Ether jumped to $3,200. Buterin created Etherum, and his 333,500 Ether are worth a little over $1 billion.
Intel is investing $3.5 billion in its plant in New Mexico, as it continues to ramp up production capacity around the U.S.
In a big new paper on remote work, three researchers found that there's a real productivity increase associated with work-from-home. The reasons vary pretty widely, from improved infrastructure to comfort with your surroundings. But there's one thing everybody has in common: They get more done when they don't spend hours getting to and from work.
The study estimates "that higher levels of WFH will boost productivity by about 4.6%. Over half of this productivity gain reflects the savings in commuting time afforded by WFH." Higher-paid workers tend to have longer commutes, the researchers found, and as they work from home, more cities will have to grapple with the lost income. But the point is this: Commuting sucks. And no matter what happens to your team going forward, you should try and minimize everyone's commute times. Because commute time kills work time.
"I've been working at Intel on developer solutions for 24 years, and when I think about the hardware that we provide, what our customers ultimately want to do with it is turn it into solutions, or essentially create new magic," says Intel's Bill Pearson: "Developers provide the magic."
Are you tired of explaining the tech news of the day to your co-workers every morning? Let us do the heavy lifting and refer them to Source Code.
Send them your referral link via Slack, text, email, or carrier pigeon and we'll send you your very own Protocol mug after you refer five friends!
Your referral link:*|RH_REFLINK|*
Today's Source Code was written by David Pierce, with help from Anna Kramer and Shakeel Hashim. Thoughts, questions, tips? Send them to david@protocol.com, or our tips line, tips@protocol.com. Enjoy your day; see you tomorrow.
Update: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated who was affected by recent defendant-friendly antitrust decisions. It is the plaintiffs that must provide more evidence, not the defendants.
To give you the best possible experience, this site uses cookies. If you continue browsing. you accept our use of cookies. You can review our privacy policy to find out more about the cookies we use.