Thaindian News

By Ranjan Bhaduri
Dec 15, (THAINDIAN NEWS) Yahoo Inc. - the noted web mail and search service provider confirmed on Tuesday that it is about to reduce its existing workforce by 4 percent. The web portal is having a hard time in increasing its revenue and combat competition. The majority of the employees who would be shown the doors are in the product group and they have been informed. After Carol Bartz joined the company as its Chief Executive yahoo has been able to hike its profit margins. However, the revenue growth is not at all encouraging and the page views at Yahoo sites have come down to an extent. Popular social networking site Facebook and search provider Google are giving Yahoo a run for its money even though its services like Messenger and Email continue to be popular worldwide.

On the layoff Yahoo said “Today’s personnel changes are part of our ongoing strategy to best position Yahoo for revenue growth and margin expansion”. The employees who are being laid off by the company are offered outplacement services as well as severance packages. At September last year it had a workforce of 14000. It struck a deal with Microsoft for 10 year after which it started implementing the back-end technology of the Redmond based software giant.

The latest Yahoo layoff is going to add the steep unemployment rate of California which has reached 12.4 percent. The industry veterans however are not surprised by the latest move by Yahoo. Some people have also blamed the CEO Carol Bartz saying she is not fit for heading a company with the stature of yahoo. However, before her joining Yahoo had cut 1600 jobs.