Wait, am I missing something? It seems like that's consistent with the article. I agree that goodwill is (depending on exact definition) essentially the expect

Wait, am I missing something? It seems like that's consistent with the article. I agree that goodwill is (depending on exact definition) essentially the expected value of a business in excess of its tangible assets. Verizon paid $8.9B for AOL + Yahoo. Oath has ~$5B of assets, which sets a rough minimum for purchase price: that's what you'd pay for the remains if Oath gave up and liquidated, and it was presumably a fixed cost in Verizon's initial purchase. (Less whatever AOL and Yahoo have in post-acquisition asset gain, but I can't imagine it's enormous.) Assessing Oath at $4.8B in goodwill + $5B in assets implied a modest gain in value (or perhaps more likely, tertiary acquisitions under the brand). Reassessing goodwill to $0.2B implies that Oath as a going concern is producing basically no value beyond what you'd get from selling off the computers, office space etc. Which seems pretty plausible, since it's hard to imagine e.g. Tumblr ad revenue even paying off its own operating costs.