Yahoo to be called 'Altaba'; what's in a name?

After US telecom major Verizon agreed to buy dying Yahoo for $4.8 billion last July and rescue CEO Marissa Mayer, we now know that the she will still maintain the role of CEO even though she along with five others will resign from the board. Once the sale closes, what’s left of Yahoo will be taken over by Chinese internet giant Alibaba and will be called ‘Altaba’.

Altaba according to the Washington Post comes from a combination of words. Simply put it’s “alternative” and “Alibaba” put together. The idea behind the name was disclosed to the author, who spoke out the same on condition of anonymity.

Frankly speaking it not just looks familiar but even sounds familiar when compared to the name of the Chinese company. And this makes sense since Yahoo does own about 15 percent of Alibaba’s shares which are worth a staggering $35 billion.

But the real reason is more down to earth. It just that the name Altaba when viewed in stock market could be easily tracked, more importantly, as an alternative to Alibaba. But it shows how much of a hit Yahoo has taken, even though the company is the fifth most visited website in the United States following Google, YouTube, Amazon and Facebook as per the current Alexa rankings .

The same report also points out how that chunk that Verizon leaves behind has been tagged as RemainCo in security filings. The same RemainCo that will soon be called Altaba also happens to own a 35.5 percent stake in Yahoo Japan.