Yahoo Fires 2,000 Workers As Company Continues To Struggle

Yahoo on Wendesday announced that it will lay off 2,000 employees, a number equivalent to 14 percent of its workforce. The company is slashing jobs as part of its efforts to restructure under the leadership of new CEO Scott Thompson

According to Yahoo the job cuts will be across the board while it plans to double down in key areas of growth that are seen as sustainable areas of business for the organization.

In a press release Thomspon noted:

“We are intensifying our efforts on our core businesses and redeploying resources to our most urgent priorities,” and “Our goal is to get back to our core purpose — putting our users and advertisers first — and we are moving aggressively to achieve that goal.”

Yahoo currently employs nearly 14,000 people and the department expected to sustain the heaviest losses is the Yahoo product division which is run by Blake Irving and oversees consumer and advertising product. Yahoo in the meantime is expected to keep its media division largely in place.

By cutting 2,000 jobs Yahoo expected to save $375 million annually, half of which will be reflected in the company’s second-quarter results.

During the company’s earnings call Scott Thompson also revealed that Yahoo expected to earn much of its future revenue from the data collected for nearly 700 million users.

In the meantime the battle for Yahoo to please investors is not over, Daniel Loeb of Third Point has demanded that Yahoo add four new members to its board, Loeb’s company is one of Yahoo’s largest shareholders.

Yahoo is still also currently battling Facebook after filing 10 patent infringement notices regarding Facebook technology and the world’s largest social network has now turned around and accused Yahoo of violating Facebook’s own technology patents.