Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

Yahoo calls 20 per cent layoff report 'inaccurate'

The company doesnt deny layoffs outright but calls reported figure "misleading"

Yahoo is denying reports that the company is in the midst of a 20 per cent reduction of its workforce.

Rumors began swirling online late on Thursday afternoon when high-tech blog TechCrunch , citing unnamed sources, reported that the online company is preparing to lay off 20 per cent of its entire staff of about 14,000, or 2,800 people.

The company is not denying there are layoffs in the works, but is trying to temper the report. " Yahoo is always evaluating expenses to align with the company's financial goals," Yahoo representative Dana Lengkeek told Computerworld by e-mail. "However, a 20 per cent reduction in Yahoo's workforce across the board is misleading and inaccurate."

Speculation about layoffs at Yahoo comes just one day after reports surfaced that another Internet icon, Google , was getting ready to hand out 10% pay raises across the board at the beginning of the new year.

Once an Internet giant and pioneer, Yahoo has slipped into a distance second-place to Google in the hot search market, where Yahoo recently tossed out its own search engine and formalized a deal with Microsoft to use Bing search for all of Yahoo's sites.

Last month, the Internet was abuzz with speculation that AOL was interested in buying Yahoo.

Citing unnamed sources, the Wall Street Journal reported that AOL's plan to buy Yahoo was so preliminary that it hadn't even included entered discussions with Yahoo.

"Putting AOL and Yahoo together is like tying two rocks together to make one of them float," Gabriel Consulting Group analyst Dan Olds has said previously of a potential Yahoo-AOL deal.

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: AOL, Dana, Google, Microsoft, Wall Street, Yahoo
References show all

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: e-commerce, Google, internet, Internet Search, search engines, Yahoo
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Networking Strategy Guide
    Articles include: IPv6 guide; How to get more out of Ethernet switches; High-speed Ethernet planning guide; Next-generation firewalls: In depth; How to lock down your wireless network. Read this Computerworld Networking Strategy Guide.
    Learn more »
  • Six tips for choosing a unified threat management (UTM) solution
    As network security grows more complex, businesses are demanding the simplicity of unified threat management (UTM). Businesses like yours are replacing multiple, outdated and costly appliances from different vendors with a single, reliable UTM solution. The best solutions offer a more powerful way to manage network security today and in the future. UTM also promises to slash your network security management efforts and hardware costs. This whitepaper offers you detailed advice on how to choose the comprehensive unified threat management (UTM) that best suits your business.
    Learn more »
  • New Mobility Requires a New Network Strategy
    Computing has gone through several major transitions through the ages, each of which raised the value of the network and dramatically lowered the cost of computing. In the years after its birth in the mainframe era, the computing industry shifted to client/server and then Internet computing. Today, we are beginning yet another major computing revolution: the shift to mobile computing. This revolution already allows us to carry mini computers, called “smartphones,” in our pockets. This shift will drive down the cost of computing even further and drive up the value of the network, forever changing its role in organisations. Read on.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments