Verizon will force its struggling Oath products onto Galaxy S9s

Back in February, we wrote about how Verizon’s struggling Oath product Go90 might not be long for this world. However, news today via Reuters shows that Verizon is ready to push Oath products onto the brand new Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus, solidifying Oath products as what they are: bloatware.

The four Oath products in question – Newsroom, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, and Go90 – will be pre-populated on all Samsung Galaxy S9 variants that carry Verizon branding. It is unclear whether or not users will be able to uninstall these apps, but come on: you probably will be stuck with them.

It is also not clear if Verizon will push these apps to existing Verizon Galaxy S9’s or if they will only pre-populate on future devices.

Oath’s chief executive officer, Tim Armstrong, said, “The amount of content consumption on phones is continuing to skyrocket, and I think brands and consumers want more high-quality content.” That “high-quality” content is apparently apps like Go90, which has a dismal 2.1 million active users per month.

This is interesting because Armstrong is the very same person who claimed he didn’t know how long the Go90 brand would last. During a media conference in February, he even referred to Go90 in the past tense, as if it were already gone.

“Go90 was a super ambitious project, which was essentially trying to start an internet mobile video service from scratch,” Armstrong said during the conference. “It was highly likely we’re going to stub our toe a huge number of times.”

The Oath series of products is a result of Verizon’s merging AOL operations – which it purchased in 2015 – with Yahoo operations. However, the Newsroom app in particular receives scathing reviews due to it continually asking you to leave reviews for the app on your device’s app store. It also has been in the news recently when it was discovered that the app scans through your emails to maximize ad opportunities.

If you were thinking about spending nearly $1,000 on a Samsung Galaxy S9 with Verizon, you might want to rethink your purchase and go unlocked instead. There’s no reason you should spend that much money on a device to be saddled with bloatware on this level.

To make things easy for you, here’s a link to buy an unlocked Galaxy S9 direct from Samsung: