Yahoo! prepares to slash jobs this week

Warms up by bumping off user profiles

By John Oates • Get more from this author

Posted in Financial News, 20th October 2008 09:11 GMT

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Yahoo! is axing jobs as part of a major cost-cutting exercise - it is expected to get rid of at least 1,000 people, the same number that went in January.

There is no official announcement yet, but Yahoo! posts quarterly results this Tuesday.

The company is looking to cut 15 per cent from budgets, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Yahoo!'s share price has suffered in the recent stock market slide, along with practically everyone else. Its shares currently stand at $12.90 - which, shareholders might argue, makes rejecting Microsoft's $33 a share offer a less than brilliant move. Microsoft shares are down some 20 per cent on the year to just under $24.

And in a splendid display of synchronicity as it prepares to further upset its workforce, Yahoo! has also hacked off its users with changes to its profile system.

Many of the complaints seem to be from people with multiple Yahoo! aliases to use in different services - these must now all link back to one profile. You can still have different aliases but they cannot have their own profile pages. Aliases can either be linked to your actual profile, or not have a profile for them. But old profiles have been saved by Yahoo! and can still be accessed by users.

There's more on the Yahoo! blog here. ®

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