Several hundred of Yahoo’s 14,000-strong staff may be departing the company by the end of the month, according to a report by the New York Times. The paper says Yahoo wants to increase its profitability, grow its stock price, and revamp its Internet portal with a narrower focus on a smaller number of important areas.
Exactly how many employees will leave or when isn’t yet set in stone, and Yahoo is reportedly still trying to decide the areas from which it needs to cut staff. The company’s fourth-quarter financial results will likely influence the final decision, but the NYT suggests Yahoo’s photo, premium music, auction, and Yahoo 360 services will likely face the axe or be reduced. In their stead, Yahoo will focus on becoming a “starting point” for users on the web by emphasizing its search engine, home page, e-mail, and news services.
According to a person “close to the discussion,” one or several plans for change will be discussed at a forthcoming meeting. The NYT expects Yahoo to make an announcement at the end of this month.
Yahoo’s okay in my book, they have their uses. I’ve had a Yahoo email account since 1998. The spam protection generally sucks, but the account itself has been very useful as an account to use for buying things online, or for other things where I don’t want to give away my “real” email address.
ATT or Microsoft will buy them up in a year or so when they are almost dead.
MS uses them as an ally like Google uses AIM. That said the MS or Yahoo IM never really worked that well talking to each other.
ATT uses yahoo for email for all of its DSL customers which is a lot of email.
In other words, Google is kicking their butt and they think the best strategy is to try to be more like Google. Only weaker. And with less market/mindshare. Hmmm.
I find the 14,000 number astonishing. I realize a lot of those are involved in handling the ad business (though I thought a fair bit of that had been outsourced) but even so, looking at yahoo.com it’s hard to find enough there to justify employing that many people.
i bet the employees are screaming yahoo indeed. a cluttered website with the only good thing that they offered was the online pool, and that became boring, as there were cheat trainers out there.
Funny, Yahoo was just voted one of the best companies to work for. Heh.
It is if you get to stay.
Ha! So true.
Yahoo is nothing but a dinosaur from the dotcom boom era that really needs to die.
Good riddance and no we don’t yahoooooo!
Remarks like these are worthless. They do make some amount of money, and employ a number of people in good paying jobs. So lets fold them up and lay off the 14000 people, I’m sure there are 14000 jobs just like they ones they do at a internet company you like…
I guess that’s legitimate.
Companies that make over-proliferous IE and Firefox toolbars quickly lose favor from me. I. Hate. Toolbars.
Google has both an IE and FF toolbar. Hate them too?
I do. I use only the FF and IE7 built in search toolbar.
Heh i was thinking EXACTLY that. Reminded me of Excite as well..
Adi
I dunno about /[
Yahoo was a huge turn off for me as a search engine because its site was so cluttered with banner ads and junk that it reduced the speed and effectiveness of it’s original purpose; to be a search engine.
In other words, if anyone deserves to get the axe, it should be the guy in charge who said it would be a good idea to deviate from the purpose.
§[<http://search.yahoo.com/<]§ has been there awhile. Granted that was only a response to Google.
Sounds like all of those people are going to be working for Boohoo now.
😀
Yahoo photo service…would that be flickr…that would be dissapointing to see that go
yeah, I’m wondering about that. Maybe they still have employees around from yahoo’s own photo site.
§[<http://closing.photos.yahoo.com/us/photos_closed.php<]§