Verizon (NYSE: VZ) announced Monday that it will sell Verizon Media to Apollo Global Management for $5 billion. This includes AOL and Yahoo!, two properties that Verizon once hoped would be the cornerstone of a media empire. Under terms of the deal, Verizon will receive $4.25 billion and maintain a 10% stake in the company, now known as Yahoo!. Verizon Media CEO Guru Gowrappan will continue to lead Yahoo!. Verizon paid $4.4 billion for AOL in 2015, and in 2017 bought Yahoo! for $4.8 billion. However, Verizon soon came to regret the move as its media company, formerly known as Oath, failed to gain traction. By 2019, it had sold Tumblr to Wordpress.com parent Automattic. Last year, BuzzFeed bought the assets of HuffPost. Image source: Getty Images. Moreover, Verizon's initial investments in other assets pale in comparison to the $67 billion AT&T (NYSE: T) paid for DIRECTV, or AT&T's $85 billion investment in WarnerMedia. Instead, Verizon will follow rival T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) in making what amounts to an all-in bet on 5G. More recently, Verizon spent $45 billion on spectrum, a move that will allow it to improve the quality of its 5G service. That improved 5G service also allows Verizon to focus on what could become a lucrative network-as-a-service business. Through that business, Verizon can bolster edge computing and artificial intelligence. As the company pointed out on the first-quarter 2021 earnings call, this can help companies like Deloitte and SAP provide real-time operational data to clients or help connect Honda's autonomous vehicles. Verizon ad Apollo expect the deal to close sometime in the second half of 2021. 10 stocks we like better than Verizon CommunicationsWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.* David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the ten best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Verizon Communications wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys. See the 10 stocks *Stock Advisor returns as of February 24, 2021 Will Healy has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Netflix and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool recommends SAP SE, T-Mobile US, and Verizon Communications. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.Source