Yahoo to lay off 2,000 workers in attempt to save company
A worker moves a section of a Yahoo! billboard onto a truck on December 21, 2011 in San Francisco, California. Yahoo’s iconic retro-style billboard was taken down after 12 years of greeting visitors to San Francisco. The brightly colored billboard, reminiscent of a 1960’s era motel sign, was installed in 1999 next to Interstate 80 near downtown San Francisco.
Yahoo will lay off 2,000 employees as part of a broader effort by CEO Scott Thompson to slim the company and make it more profitable to its shareholders, CNN Money reported.
The Guardian wrote that the company is attempting to define its "core purpose." Once an internet giant, Yahoo has struggled to differentiate its services from bigger and more popular rival Google. It quit the search engine war in 2009, according to CNN, conceding to Google – which surged to popularity by offering a new search algorithm that provided more accurate results.
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The cuts, which amount to 14 percent of the company's workforce, is the sixth downsizing in four years.
"Today's actions are an important next step toward a bold, new Yahoo – smaller, nimbler, more profitable and better equipped to innovate as fast as our customers and our industry require," Thompson said in a statement.
Yahoo still has many users, but Google and Facebook have both overtaken it in terms of web popularity. The company estimates it will save $375 million annually from the layoffs, according to USA Today.