When she revealed last week that Yahoo will spin off its nearly $40 billion stake in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer mentioned that a legacy, ancillary Yahoo business would go along with it.
Now, we know which one. Yahoo announced on its Tumblr blog Tuesday that Yahoo Small Business will move over to a newly formed public company to be called SpinCo, the same entity that will be home to Yahoo s 384 million shares of Alibaba. The tax-free transaction hands over the Alibaba riches to Yahoo investors and avoids a tax bill that would have cost some $16 billion.
And what of Yahoo Small Business, a division formerly known as Yahoo Store that is rooted in Yahoo s $49 million acquisition of Massachusetts e-commerce company Viaweb in 1998? The product helps small businesses sell their wares online.
Our Yahoo Small Business employees will be invited to join the new company, wrote Amer Akhtar, who has been leading the small business division since November.
Yahoo declined to comment on how many employees would be affected by the shift.
P.S.: Don t remember Viaweb? Here s a screenshot that its co-founder Paul Graham, now with YCombinator, took shortly before the Yahoo acquisition in 1998.
Above: Yahoo is bidding farewell to its e-commerce branch, but its company store still sells piggy banks, such as this one shown at a Mercury News conference room.
