Arnold Zafra

The Rumors are Getting Stronger, Yahoo to Layoff Staff

January 21st, 2008 by Arnold Zafra | 5 Comments

The rumor that started over the weekend about Yahoo’s impending plan to layoff hundreds of Yahoo staff worldwide seems to be getting stronger than bleaker. NYT, WSJ and Bloomberg are citing reliable sources confirming the rumored mass layoff. Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang and his crew are opting to stay mum about it and would either break out the news or disprove it. We could only wait and see how this story is going to unfold. 

But whether this rumored mass layoff at Yahoo is true or not, (ok, I personally belief that it is true), we can’t help but wonder why would such mass layoff happen or if it’s not true (ok, I’m still discounting that it is not true) why would such rumor surface up.

I couldn’t help but wonder how this would affect Jerry Yang’s reign at Yahoo. Such a bad time to be taking on such a great task of managing the second most popular search engine entity. We shouldn’t blame the guy. He inherited a company trying to survive and outclass a stronger opponent such as Google. And it would certainly take a lot to compete with the big G. If you are unfortunate, you would have to resort to such ill fatal management move as the rumored layoff. 

If the mass layoff happens, what’s next for Yahoo after then? Would this layoff seal Jerry Yang’s fate as CEO? Hopefully not. Yahoo has been a survivor of a previous mass layoff before. The last of which happened in 2001. Since then, Yahoo still managed to rise up its feet and steadily re-emerge as a tough contender in the battle for search engine and over all web supremacy battle. 

Until Yahoo officially announces something about this rumor, we could all just speculate.

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Comments

5 responses so far ↓

  • Jaime on Jan 22, 2008 at 1:10 am

    Lay offs are the last thing Yahoo! needs. They have lost the search engine war. They should focus their energy on their home portal and popular properties like Flickr.

  • Xianhong on Jan 22, 2008 at 7:29 am

    Yahoo need to do something innovative on the search technology, For web search, i never use yahoo, Google is my favorite SE. I installed the google toolbar, so i can make a search without open the google. I like Google than Yahoo. as Jaime said, they should focus on their home portal.

  • Michael Martinez on Jan 22, 2008 at 6:03 pm

    They could focus less on links and leave Google in the dust when it comes to search.

  • Egyptian Mau Breeders on Jan 22, 2008 at 6:44 pm

    Yah, it was kinda weird. My website for Egyptian Mau breeders is still under construction and as soon as it was indexed it hit number 1 for my main keywords. I enjoy the traffic, but it also says that yahoo doesn’t look into sites that are brand new.

  • daniel on Jan 22, 2008 at 7:46 pm

    “Lay offs are the last thing Yahoo! needs.”
    Yahoo has way too many services. Can you count them? http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/family/more/

    I’m sure it can stand to lay off the people in charge of Yahoo Golf or something.

    I hear there’s only 3 people working at Yahoo Finance. Strange considering how that’s been one of it’s most popular products.

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