The future of Yahoo’s Web Properties

If there are not any last minute changes, the last days of the once-mighty Yahoo company have begun.

Verizon offered $4.8 billion for the Yahoo brand name, core patents, and the bulk of the company's Internet properties, and Yahoo accepted the offer last year.

The only major properties not included in the deal is the stake in Yahoo Japan, and the stake in Chinese company Alibaba.

All other web properties will be part of Verizon once finalized. The following Yahoo properties will fly under the Verizon flag from that moment on:

1. The main Yahoo Portal and Search Engine.
2. Major Yahoo services such as Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Finance, and Yahoo Sports.
3. The photo community Flickr.
4. The blogging platform Tumblr.
5. Any other Yahoo property that is not Yahoo Japan (Yahoo Travel, Yahoo TV, Yahoo, Shopping, Yahoo News, Yahoo Music, Rivals.com, Yahoo Autos, Yahoo Answers, Yahoo Advertising, Yahoo Local, Yahoo Developer Network, Yahoo Homes, Yahoo Groups and others).

What happens to those properties?

All these properties will fly under the Verizon banner after the finalization of the deal. But will all survive the integration?

Verizon's plan, most likely, is to place core Yahoo properties on the same level as AOL in the company's hierarchy. While it could move Yahoo under the AOL brand, the other option seems more likely at least in the beginning.

That does not mean that there won't be any mergers. While services like Flickr or Tumblr will likely live on in one form or the other, the same cannot be said for smaller Yahoo properties.

Verizon may look for synergies between properties, and there are plenty. Aol maintains two tech blogs and one general news blog for instance. Then there is AOL Mail, and AOL Search, and entertainment and lifestyle services.

Yahoo News could be merged with the Huffington Post, Yahoo Mail with AOL Mail, Yahoo Search with AOL Search, and so on and so forth.

While there will certainly be mergers, some Yahoo properties may also be closed down completely. This would not be the first time that relatively popular web properties are shut down and redirected to others.

Remember AOL shutting down Download Squad and several other properties in favor of the two big properties Huffington Post and Engadget? The same could happen again.

There will probably be changes to properties that keep their independence as well. Considering that the migration is even bigger than that of AOL a couple of years ago, it seems likely that it will take some time before we know more about Verizon's plans with Yahoo.

Now You: What's your take? Which properties will be merged, which shut down?