Yahoo today is a private equity fund first and an operating business second. By that I mean, the vast majority of Yahoo's value derives from investments like Alibaba and Yahoo Japan. The core business is relatively small. You might have to do a deal like this in order to get the core business spun out cleanly from the rest.

Regarding the core business, we're in an era where markets are becoming more winner-take-all meaning scale is your network effect and there are huge gaps between 2nd or 3rd place and the rest. This is especially true in ad tech and ad supported businesses (Facebook, Google, and the rest). From this perspective, Yahoo core is probably hugely more valuable to Verizon or another massive company who can credibly challenge Facebook and Google, than it would be by itself.