Yahoo starts job cull

Planned cuts go ahead despite Microsoft wrangle

13 February 2008 14:00 GMT / By Katie Scott

Yahoo is today starting the process of slashing up to 1000 jobs.

Despite uncertainty about its future - after the company rejected a takeover bid by Microsoft - and as rumours circle as to what the Yahoo execs are going to do to fend off further unwanted approaches, Yahoo has begun to lay off staff.

We revealed last month that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang had confirmed that the company was to make cuts in a bid to raise funds to try and catch up with Google in terms of online searches.

A spokeswoman for Yahoo declined to comment further on the cutbacks when contacted by Reuters merely repeating the general outlines the Yahoo executive provided last month, and which we reported.

However, the news agency contacted one Yahoo engineering manager, who was having to fire staff himself, said the cuts were spread across a variety of divisions.

The unnamed source said that the cut-backs are performance-based rather than part of a plan to shut-down whole operations.

He gave no further details.