DailyTech - Yahoo Cuts 1,000 Jobs as Profits Fall 23%

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Internet Yahoo Cuts 1,000 Jobs as Profits Fall 23%
Jason Mick (Blog) - January 30, 2008 3:37 PM

33 comment(s) - last by robbyjr.. on Feb 3 at 4:01 AM

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang hasn't been forced to step down yet, but as Yahoo continues to flounder, he's being forced to make some bold changes in the coming year. (Source: Thomas Brown - Bloomberg News)

Making choice cuts, Yahoo struggles to stay afloat amidst plummeting profits

Yahoo, despite owning the most visited set of properties on the Internet, has been forced to make big changes to deal with losing ground to its hungry competitors like Google. Yesterday, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang confirmed fears with an announcement that profit had significantly dipped from the previous year.

Yahoo experienced profit dips for several quarters, and now has another to add to the list. The fourth quarter saw profit fall to $206 million USD, down from $269 million USD from the previous year, a drop of approximately 23.5%. This comes despite revenue increasing $113 million USD to a total of $1.83 billion USD.

Profit for the year sunk to $660 million USD, from $751 million USD only a year ago. Revenue increased over the year, but could not help the sinking profit margin.

The end result is that Yahoo will lay off approximately 7% of its workforce, trimming 1,000 of its 14,300 jobs.

CEO Jerry Yang says the company is facing strong "headwinds" and said, "This is a pivotal time for Yahoo's business and we have a unique window of opportunity right now to make the necessary, game-changing investments."

Analysts state that Yahoo may be in for even harder times if it loses its broadband provider deals with some of the major telecoms, including AT&T. Many analysts have speculated that AT&T may drop Yahoo entirely.

Furthermore, Yahoo's heavy investments in online advertising may lead to further woes if advertising takes a hit due to the jittery, downward-leaning economy.

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Sell

By Murst on 1/30/2008 4:37:07 PM , Rating: 2

Soon they'll be cheap enough for News Corp to buy them... if they aren't already.

MS might wanna jump in and purchase them just for their patents.

RE: Sell

By XPguy on 1/30/08, Rating: -1

RE: Sell

By helios220 on 1/30/2008 5:47:08 PM , Rating: 2

You do realize that virtually all stocks down? Do a quick 3 month history on virtually any big name stock.

At the time of posting this, even the all mighty Google's stocks are down $198 dollars since November, it totally is because they are super lame and has nothing to do with the dominant bearish trend of the entire market... yeah that's it.

I personally don't care for Apple, but that was still one of the stupidest things I’ve read in a while.

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RE: Sell

By Eomer of Aldburg on 1/30/2008 6:33:53 PM , Rating: 2

By the way it's, "one of the most stupid..." not "stupidest."

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RE: Sell

By eye smite on 1/30/2008 6:51:26 PM , Rating: 2

You took the time to post a grammatical correction? I'm slightly ashamed, I don't think there's anyone here that didn't understand his use of the word stupidest. Oh well, I guess you was gonna learn him sumtin huh.

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RE: Sell

By helios220 on 1/30/2008 6:59:29 PM , Rating: 2

I'm not surprised in the least bit that he took the time to post the grammatical correction. It's almost standard practice in forums when one person insults another person's intelligence that you nitpick the reply for any scant traces of irony and display your find with pride.

However, as with the other grammatical connoisseurs who never fail to pounce on that one, check the dictionary:

stupidest [stoo-pid, styoo-] adjective, -er, -est , noun

I’m an Engineer and follow the long professional tradition of poor grammar, but sure enough there’s always someone that takes that bait.

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RE: Sell

By Regs on 1/31/2008 10:31:20 AM , Rating: 2

1. He was not the original guy who bashed you, so he thought he'd correct you or show you a better way to say it.
2.Just because the it's a word means it's grammatically correct.
3. The best way to say it is "one of the most stupid". -est would imply the only one, as in singular. You typed it as there is more than one.

4. Get over it.

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RE: Sell

By wordsworm on 1/30/2008 11:17:10 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
By the way it's, "one of the most stupid..." not "stupidest."

Who let Dan Quayle post comments in DT?!
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/stupidest?r...

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RE: Sell

By Murst on 1/30/2008 5:56:48 PM , Rating: 2

Most companies don't fire workers when they are posting record profits and revenues...

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RE: Sell

By daftrok on 1/30/2008 11:32:46 PM , Rating: 1

Congratulations! You have set the record for number of consecutive -1 post ratings in one month. You're total average rating is currently -0.71! You get....an iMac! YAY!

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RE: Sell

By rdeegvainl on 1/31/2008 7:45:19 AM , Rating: 2

As opposed to what? A rock, that falls at the same speed? (Gravity there pal) Besides, apple was still increasing profits, but missed the mark set by speculators by a fraction of a percent, and that is why their stocks fell.

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RE: Sell

By wordsworm on 2/1/2008 7:15:42 AM , Rating: 2

I predict MS will make an offer. I figure they've got to be worth around $46 billion. Whether or not they'll sell is anyone's guess. I hope they don't. Yahoo is pretty good still, and I'm back to hating MS. I hope they resist the borg... I mean MS.

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My experience

By Scorpion on 1/30/2008 4:27:32 PM , Rating: 2

I never got into using Yahoo much. I used them a long time ago in the past, in the very early years of Web 1.0. The problem I have is that all of their many services failed to grab my attention. I always had some issues with their maps, or their mail, or some other thing. Their interface was never appealing to me, some simple things seemed overly complicated, and then I found other sites that provided the same services with a much cleaner and more user friendly interface and stuck with them. Basically first impressions matter, and Yahoo never gave me a good first impression with what they had to offer. Everything seemed so "half" done and very "busy".

RE: My experience

By kileil on 1/30/2008 4:31:01 PM , Rating: 2

**This comment has been replace by Yahoo.**
**Please wait while we load an advertisement for WeatherBug**

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RE: My experience

By retrospooty on 1/30/08, Rating: 0

RE: My experience

By BrownJohn on 1/30/2008 6:23:51 PM , Rating: 2

I feel almost exactly the same. I used their search for a short time, until i realized how powerful google's search was. I never liked their email either. Gmail is a much more clean and intuitive interface, and it doesn't send ads at the very bottom of each message. Google maps is, by far, superior to Yahoo maps as well. Basically, Yahoo has lost all their profit to Google.

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RE: My experience

By xti on 1/30/2008 6:27:44 PM , Rating: 2

i agree, you go to their main site, and its like almost they integrated too much, and now its way too busy...headache...google has so much negative space (from an art point of view, white space) on their page that its a big plus.

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RE: My experience

By anandtechuser07 on 2/1/2008 3:45:04 AM , Rating: 2

You're comparing google's main webpage with Yahoo's main webpage? Yahoo is a portal and aggregator. Google is a search engine. If you want a clean Yahoo interface, look here:
http://search.yahoo.com/

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RE: My experience

By eye smite on 1/30/2008 6:43:40 PM , Rating: 3

The ironic part of that is Yahoo outsourced their search engine to google, and it said right on the search page at yahoo, powered by google. That's what helped leap google into the giant they are now. How many times have companies made bad decisions like that. lol

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What does Yahoo! do exactly?

By jskirwin on 1/30/2008 4:30:32 PM , Rating: 2

It's a search engine. It's an email provider. It's a portal...

What exactly is it good at? What does it do well - better than its competitors?

It's search engine is trounced by Google. Ditto email. And portals? Anyone make any money on those? It tried auctions, and never threatened eBay. It tried personals - and was squished by Match.com and eHarmony. It tried social networking - and MySpace and Facebook beat 'em at that.

What do they do better than everyone else? And if the answer is nothing, why are they still around?

RE: What does Yahoo! do exactly?

By Etsp on 1/30/2008 5:58:44 PM , Rating: 2

Their finance page is at least better than Google's...

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RE: What does Yahoo! do exactly?

By kmmatney on 1/30/2008 11:46:57 PM , Rating: 2

Their Fantasy Football is pretty awesome.

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RE: What does Yahoo! do exactly?

By feelingshorter on 1/31/2008 12:13:25 AM , Rating: 2

Your quite right. But, Yahoo recently revamped their email. It is extremely clean looking now, without that huge and annoying ad right on the side of your page like they used to. Dare it say it, its almost google like simplified look.

But its Yahoo's fault for not revamping their email system earlier since google had the first email that was that clean, and non annoying ads, they won over most people's loyalty. Remember those full page ads on yahoo that made you "click to continue" while your viewing your email? Just for that alone I left to Google. But like i said, they changed it but changing it now won't make people who's already on google switch.

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RE: What does Yahoo! do exactly?

By anandtechuser07 on 2/1/2008 3:41:14 AM , Rating: 3

Yahoo has 3x the number of email users than Google.

Yahoo Sports gets more unique visitors than espn.com.

Yahoo News gets more unique visitors than CNN.

Every single one of Yahoo's properties is either #1, 2, or 3 in its respective category. Apparently Yahoo provides a lot of services that you don't use. Stick with Google to search for porn, dude.

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RE: What does Yahoo! do exactly?

By robbyjr on 2/3/2008 4:01:21 AM , Rating: 2

> It's a search engine. It's an email provider. It's a
> portal...

Is google any different? The difference is that Yahoo doesn't spy on its users.

> What do they do better than everyone else? And if the
> answer is nothing, why are they still around?

So, in your point of view, there's no space for a number 1 and 2 for anything?

They might not be better than google, but they're the second and much better than zillions out there.

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Heh Buzzwords R Us

By Connoisseur on 1/30/2008 5:13:58 PM , Rating: 4

"This is a pivotal time for Yahoo's business and we have a unique window of opportunity right now to make the necessary, game-changing investments."

I count at least 3 buzzwords/phrases in that one sentence. In layman's terms it sounds like "We're in deep s**t and unless I pull something out of my arse, we're screwed"

RE: Heh Buzzwords R Us

By Murst on 1/30/2008 5:58:25 PM , Rating: 2

BINGO!

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RE: Heh Buzzwords R Us

By Connoisseur on 1/30/2008 6:03:51 PM , Rating: 2

Seriously I hate buzzterms. In our office, we make a game out counting how many buzzwords our boss uses during the quarterly meeting. It gets really out of hand.

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Do you YaHOOOOOOOO?

By shraz on 1/30/2008 4:54:21 PM , Rating: 1

I actually prefer their search engine results compared to Google. I am a Google quality rater and I spend a great amount of my time looking at both search engines for results.
I currently use as my homepage the new layout of my.yahoo.com and it is very good and customizable. I have News, Weather, Movies, Stock, Sports scoreboard, etc.
The thing I hate about Yahoo is all their page are different from one another. They need to combine the same layout through their sites like Answers, Sports, Movies etc.

RE: Do you YaHOOOOOOOO?

By MaulBall789 on 1/30/2008 5:59:07 PM , Rating: 2

I've used My Yahoo as a portal and for email since 98. The new interface is nice but nothing special. But as a news aggregator I am used to it and have customized all the RSS feeds I want (including DailyTech) from News, Entertainment, Sports and even a comics page. It has basically taken the place of the newspapers I used to read daily, right down to my local movie listings and tv guide.

I would definitely miss it if it were to disappear.

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RE: Do you YaHOOOOOOOO?

By vortex222 on 1/30/2008 11:05:37 PM , Rating: 2

i have set up Google to do the same thing, without all the interface noise.

clean, simple and fast.

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Bull!**#.

By iFX on 1/31/2008 11:24:01 AM , Rating: 1

I am sure Jerry Yang took a paycut and gave back his bonus from 2007 right?

Yeah right. Fucking creapo.

These CEOs like to play God with people's jobs. Well fuck them. People rely on those jobs.