Yahoo profits drop, 1000 employees will be fired
After announcing a sharp drop in fourth-quarter profits Tuesday, Yahoo issued a disappointing outlook for this year, suggesting that investors would have to wait until 2009 for a turnaround. Yahoo also said that as part of its plan to revive its fortunes, it would cut 1,000 jobs by mid-February to reduce costs and narrow its focus to its most important businesses. The company, however, said it planned to invest aggressively in some areas, like advertising technology and selected portions of its Internet portal, as it tries to capture a larger share of online ad dollars. Since some laid-off employees could apply for new jobs at Yahoo, the net effect on the work force, which recently grew to 14,300, was not clear.
Jerry Yang, the chief executive, warned investors of “head winds” this year. Yahoo’s projections for revenue growth and profitability in 2008 were either at the low end of analysts’ expectations or below them. Yahoo said that its fourth-quarter net income fell to $206 million, or 15 cents a share, down 23 percent from $269 million, or 19 cents a share, in the same quarter a year ago. Revenue grew 8 percent to $1.8 billion. Excluding commissions paid to certain advertising partners, revenue was $1.4 billion, in line with analysts’ expectations. Mr. Yang, the Yahoo co-founder who was named chief executive last summer amid growing shareholder discontent, has promised to focus on three objectives: becoming a starting point for consumers on the Web; making the company a top choice for marketers seeking to place ads on sites across the Web; and opening Yahoo’s technology infrastructure to third-party programmers and publishers. It looks Google is really becoming a dominant search engine with no real competitors.
Source: Washington Post, NYTimes
Comments(29)
yahoo su_k a_s
Thats the nature of the beast, I’m afraid. Still – Yahoo are one of the hardiest dotcom businesses so I reckon they’ll bounce back fairly soon. I thought the search engine market was flat now anyways….
Kefrif
Just like HD-DVD yahoo will just gradually fall out. I mean seriously, who needs yahoo? Google gets you everything you will ever need. People only need one mega-search engine/email account so why would anyone need yahoo?
yahoo used to be teh man back in the days but now it sucks.
google with it’s bunch of services (like gmail) pwns yahoo
Its really hard for a internet business to remain profitable today with emerging competitors.Ive been though 5 redundancy rounds over the past 23 years where i still work but we are slowing losing are market share so im always concerned.
the reason yahoo sucks so much is that they allow you to purchase your search engine placement, unlike google that separates paid results from regular results.
Looks ripe for a google buyout, if only to remove any competition.
what’s yahoo?
seriously gold days of yahoo are long gone but having ONLY google is also tricky – too much power i say but when i need something i google and that’s it. don’t really remember using some other search engine for some time actually. so i give google the reason to exist and they provide good services and circle is closed.
They expect to stand still for 5 years in an ever evolving technology system? Come on, they deserve a well respected funeral, thats it!
Lol, It’ll be interesting to see if one of those thousand employees release the Yahoo!(TM) code.
I prefer yahoo over google any day.
I like the way it puts together search, news, mail, finance,film and tv guides etc. on the one page. makes for a perfect home page.
maybe google’s been waiting for this one or perhaps for yahoo’s share price to come down a bit then google will buy em
I prefer yahoo cuzz it uses FreeBSD
Ha! Give Google all the credit you can, *while* you can.
PS: If Yahoo falls, you’ll start praying for Google to fall too.
I prefer Google as my home page because you still have the option of a spartan yet attractive start page. Yahoo’s is too “busy” for my taste. My one complaint about Google is how they are always trying to sneak the searchbar in with other apps installers.
If Yahoo closes down we will have a search/ad market that looks like the OS market – all dominated by one large corporation.
“don’t really remember using some other search engine for some time actually.”
Before Google I used “HotBot” which I believe was bought out by lycos or was always owned by lycos.
remember fetch lycos fetch; good dog!
Google is the best hands down. Also for the people saying they like yahoo better because of the news and tv on one page, google has that option too called igoogle. If you log into your gmail account you can set to option of loading igoogle everytime you go to google.com. It has a much cleaner look than yahoo.
Time for Google to buy them and extend their empire !!!! Resistence is futile and Yahoo is seeing that right now.Submit or be defeated !!!
Next shall be the creation of a powerful Army and a country known as Googlia where nerdz and geeks from all walk of life can go live without being harrassed by the bully of our time.
One search engine to rule them all
The internet has left its infancy and become a toddler. There comes a time when you need to toss those old baby toys that do nothing but take up space. IheartAOLforever!
I hate yahoo, they have managed to sneak their crappy search bar into my PC and now i can’t get rid of it, death to them.
Maybe profits are low because the executive team is taking more pay and bonuses. Instead of taking a pay cut, they just fire employees, then take the money for themselves.
Yahoo has too much information on screen , google it´s simple and powerful.
Maybe people at yahoo forgot the first use of it´s page.
Anyway,way they need too much people?
They’re also part of the media black out against Ron Paul. It’s a little spooky
Wow, really interesting and constructive comments -for a change. Nice one guys
I prefer google because of its simplicity. Almost completely clean page, with just small logo and search box. I dont need anything more from search engine!
That’s what they get for cooperating with the Chinese government, sending innocent freedom seekers to prison.
It’s not that Google is far superior to Yahoo, more of a simplicity factor in my opinion. You go to Google.com and you are confronted by their logo with a search box under it. If you want to jive off and do your own thing from there you can simply do so by the few tabs at the top of the page. Everything looks clean. You go to yahoo.com and you’re bombarded with bullshat. Everything is so hectic there and nuts. For moderate computer users and new computer users alike its way too uncomfortable and even confusing to look at. They need a new design and they need it fast.
For simplicity, I have this
http://search.yahoo.com/
as for Google – sorry. I may try that again, when they start sharing exactly what information they save, why they save it and for how long.
Also I do like the product range they offer. What exactly has Google to offer? Online “Word” and “Excel”? Yep right – see above. Mail? I use that, too – as spam bait. Let’s see what kind of profile they get by scanning these. Google Earth or Google Maps? geesh… Google Earth is a playtoy which was fun to play with in the beginning but started to bore me quite soon.
The same goes for the other products – everything Google releases is a new way to gather information – and they like to keep it secret. At least Yahoo tells you what it does and why.
call me a n00b, but that’s the way I see it.