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House representatives sent a letter to Yahoo's CEO... from 2017
House representatives have sent a letter to a Yahoo CEO who hasn't worked at the company for four years.
Verizon is selling its media business for $5 billion after splurging on AOL and Yahoo
Verizon has agreed a deal to sell its "Verizon Media" unit — including Engadget — to the investment firm Apollo Global Management for $5 billion.
Oath to pay $5 million settlement over children's online privacy
Oath (Engadget's parent brand) is paying a record-breaking settlement for its approach to children's privacy. The Verizon-owned media company has agreed to pay $4.95 million, the largest ever settlement in a case like this, after New York state found that it violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act by running targeted ads on sites meant primarily for kids under 13 years old, such as Roblox.com. Up until November 2017, Oath's systems (and AOL's before that) reportedly ignored information warning that sites were subject to COPPA rules and sent ads that collected potentially sensitive data through the use of cookies and location info.
After Math: When you come undone
Oh hey, what a surprise, the guy who joked just last week about how he was a "puppet FCC Chairman" in front of his former Verizon bosses just so happened to spearhead a campaign to roll back Net Neutrality protections -- something Verizon has long lobbied for. Such a coincidence. Of course those weren't the only shenanigans to take place this week. The UK declared the website of accused serial rapist Julian Assange, Wikileaks, a media organization; a crew physically stole $1.8 million in cryptocurrency somehow, Disney managed to become an even larger evil empire than it already is and AOL finally took AIM out back behind the woodshed. Numbers because how else will you maintain an accurate body count?
RIP, AOL Instant Messenger
We knew this day would come. One of the major parts of our formative years on the worldwide web -- we called it that back in the day -- will cease to be. AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) came to a close a few hours ago. While we've already eulogized it, it doesn't make the moment any less bitter. Sunrise, sunset.
The FCC is peddling its net neutrality spin as facts
Last week, the FCC released the final draft of its proposal to roll back net neutrality protections, a plan that the agency will vote on next month. Removing these protections has been a targeted goal of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai since he took the position, and even in the face of immense pushback from both the public and hundreds of companies and organizations, the FCC has moved forward with the plan and is fully expected to approve it in just a couple of weeks. Since its release, the draft proposal has continued to draw intense opposition and now the FCC has released a list of myths vs. facts in regards to the plan. But this list, which poses as an explanatory breakdown of the FCC proposal and is most definitely the agency's attempt at damage control, is nearly as ill-conceived as the plan itself.
CompuServe's still-active forums are finally shutting down
It turns out that Instant Messenger (AIM) isn't the only thing that AOL is shutting down next month. On December 15th, Oath (AOL and Engadget's dear parent) is also closing what remains of the CompuServe forums which, yes, still actually exist. CompuServe had the first ever mainstream online forums well before the internet came along, letting users connect to its central servers via old-school dial-up modems. You can credit (or blame) the company for allowing some of the first online group chats about subjects like investing, politics and religion.
Alto Mail is shutting down now that AOL is part of Oath
AOL (Engadget's former parent company) launched Alto Mail years ago in a bid to make sense of increasingly cluttered email with a slicker look and organizing features like the Dashboard. However, it's clear that this approach isn't alluring enough now that AOL has been absorbed into Verizon's Oath brand. The Alto team is telling customers that it's shutting down Alto Mail as it transitions to working on "something new and exciting" under Oath's umbrella. The mobile apps will no longer be available as of November 9th, and Alto is ending support for all apps on December 10th.
AIM 🔴 AFK 4EVA
For the better part of two decades, starting in the mid '90s, AIM (previously AOL Instant Messenger) was the way to communicate online. For a certain generation, which most of the Engadget staff happens to be a part of, it defined their youth. Those of us who experience high school and college in a world before Twitter, Facebook and, yes, Gmail, Instant Messenger was how we kept up with friends after class and well into the night. We made friends from across the globe, and a few of us even found love. But around 2010 AIM's popularity started to decline. Fast. Now the OG of instant messaging apps is being put out to pasture. On December 15th AIM will finally shut down. But first the Engadget staff wanted to give it a proper send off.
AOL Instant Messenger is shutting down on December 15th
It's the end of an era. AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) is officially shutting down on December 15th, Oath announced this morning. AIM started out as the built-in chat application in America Online's desktop client, but it really took off after it was broken out as a separate application in 1997. The app, and its iconic messaging sound, were staples for anyone who spent too much time on the web in the '90s and early '00s. Really though, the writing was on the wall for AIM since AOL laid off most of the division in 2012. AIM also started cutting off third-party access earlier this year, which was a big sign the service was on its way out.
Yahoo's 2013 hack impacted all 3 billion accounts
Last year Yahoo (now part of Oath along with AOL after its acquisition by Verizon) announced that back in 2013, hackers had stolen info covering over one billion of its accounts. Today, the combined company announced that further investigation reveals the 2013 hack affected all of its accounts that existed at the time -- about three billion. The information taken "may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (using MD5) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers."
Revisit the '90s with a collection of AOL CDs
The Internet Archive is a treasure trove for software geeks. In recent months, the site has hosted everything from GIFs from Geocities to Macintosh games from the 80s. Its latest blast from the past is an entire section dedicated to AOL CD-ROMs.
Yahoo eSports shuttered after just a year
As of tomorrow, Yahoo eSports will be no more. The site, which covers professional competitive video gaming, is a casualty of the Yahoo merger with AOL.
Verizon now officially owns Yahoo (minus Marissa Mayer)
Last July, Verizon announced that it planned to buy the bulk of Yahoo's internet business. Today, Verizon announced that the $4.48 billion acquisition of Yahoo is now complete. As a part of the completed deal, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer will step down.
Seven corporate rebrand attempts even worse than 'Oath'
Now that the Verizon-AOL-Yahoo! merger is finally nearing its completion, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong took to social media on Monday to unveil the combined organization's new name: Oath. No, seriously. They're calling it Oath. Yeah, like the promise. No, I don't know why either, but that distant rumbling you hear? That's the sound of the revamped moniker being ruthlessly dragged through Twitter by innumerable hot takes.
Yahoo and AOL are part of Verizon's new 'Oath' brand (updated)
Somewhere along the way, Verizon's planned purchase of Yahoo got real complicated. Thanks to security breachs of gargantuan proportions, Yahoo has lost a ton of value -- and the company was struggling even when Verizon announced its intentions to buy the former internet juggernaut. Part of the value lost is in the Yahoo brand, which Verizon apparently considers toxic at this point. To that end, Verizon is changing the name of the combined Yahoo and AOL company. Business Insider first reported that "Oath" will be the new name of the company (which would be the parent company of Engadget). Minutes after we published this story, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong confirmed the change in a tweet.
VP Mike Pence used AOL email for state business while governor
The Indianapolis Star reports that in response to a public records request, the current governor of Indiana has released 30 pages of emails from the AOL (which is the parent company of Engadget) account of Mike Pence. The former governor and current Vice President is said to have used his personal email account for state business on a number of occasions, which the paper notes is not against Indiana law. It also notes that a number of emails were not released because the state considered them "confidential."
Aol starts to shut down third-party AIM apps
Aol has revealed that it will soon block third-party apps from accessing its aging AIM messenger service. According to reports from 9To5Mac, the internet provider has notified Adium users that the app will stop functioning on March 28th. So far, Adium is the only service to be affected, but from the look of Aol's statement it seems as though this could just be the first casualty of ye olde AIM's imminent shutdown. The current iteration of AIM runs on the more modern TOC protocol, so third-party apps were the only way to access the older version. That system ran on an Aol platform called OSCAR, which also provided the backbone to Apple's iChat service back in the day.
Verizon will pay $350 million less for Yahoo
Despite two massive security breaches, which affected over a billion user accounts, Verizon still wants to make Yahoo its own. Early reports suggested that the carrier has been seeking to reduce its $4.83 billion offer by $250 million, but the two parties announced today that they have agreed on the slightly higher figure of $350 million.
The Engadget Podcast Ep 18: We Both Go Down Together
Managing Editor Dana Wollman and Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar join host Terrence O'Brien to talk about the biggest tech stories of the week. First Dana and Devindra debate the value of Amazon's delivery drones and Google's... I mean Alphabet's new self-driving car company, Waymo. Plus they discuss the privacy freakout surrounding Evernote. Then all three will dig into the never ending security failures of Yahoo. Now that the company has admitted that over 1.5 billion user accounts were compromised -- and didn't say a word about it for over 2 years -- will Verizon still go through with its planned buy out? The panel certainly hopes not.
