Yahoo's Very Public Lay-off

Last December 10, Yahoo laid off 10% of it's work force. This is equivalent to about 1,500 employees losing their jobs just a couple of weeks before Christmas. Affected departments include sales, marketing, content, administration, engineering, and acquisitions like Maven Networks and Right Media Exchange. Yahoo has been in trouble for a long time. Ever since the Microsoft billion dollar offer or probably even before that when they were so obviously lagging behind Google in advertising revenue.

This laying off was magnified because it became very public given that Yahoo is an advanced company plus everyone and their mother is online. The scenario was adjudged negative for Yahoo as a company but possibly redeeming for the newly unemployed.

"People in this business know the internet as their go-to place to express themselves," said managing director Don Leon, Stephen Bradford Search, to AdAge. "The benefits of […] getting your name out there and letting people know you're available outweigh the potential downside of being perceived as bitter."

Now care of Valleywag, here are some leaked power point slides that indicate how to lay-off people during this time. Apparently it is not to be called "firing" but "getting fit." Nevertheless it's still having people jobless and no matter what that is called, that still hurts

It's just sad when things like this have to happen. I have experienced having to lose a team of 12 before and compared to this the numbers are smaller ~ true. But that didn't make it any harder. I cried when the news was relayed. It's never easy, but it's management decision. Apparently cutting off some of the branches would make the tree grow better (or more financially stable - whichever turned you on)

For managers out there, this might be useful I think. I for one, am not good at following such orders and would have most likely lost my nerve and ended up getting fired myself. Here are the Yahoo "how to sack employees" slides

Yahoo Dumped Microsoft Buy-out For Google Non-Exclusive Partnership. Has the Courtship Ended? Or is it just beginning?

Yahoo has finally made their call. They have finally said "NO" to Microsoft. Yes Microsoft got dumped. Yahoo didn't want a buy-out or maybe they did, but they just didn't think Microsoft's offer was good enough.

What they have done instead is partnered with Google. They have ceded their search capacity to Google. So right now, the ads that will come out on Yahoo are essentially Google ads. That's what it means.

The business strategy here being that revenues could potentially increase for Yahoo search. However the flip-side is that this gives Google even more power in the market. It's now closing into monopoly if I may say so myself as Google supplies other smaller search engines like Ask.com

CNet reports that Yahoo expects the revenue to help the company invest in its dual-pronged advertising strategy that's designed to offer advertisers an easy ability to buy text ads on search results and to buy graphical "display" ads elsewhere on Yahoo's considerable Internet properties.

"This agreement provides a source of funds to both deliver financial value to stockholders from search monetization and to invest in our broader strategy to transform display advertising and advance our starting-point objectives with users," Yahoo President Sue Decker said in a statement. "It enhances competition by promoting our ability to compete in the marketplace where we are especially well-positioned: in the convergence of search and display."

Under the deal, Yahoo will select the search terms for which Google will supply ads, the companies said. The ads will be displayed in the United States and Canada, and Decker took pains to say how Yahoo controls which Google results are displayed and when.

Yahoo's search ad engine, Panama, is competitive with Google's for many popular queries, but Yahoo plans to use Google with less common searches, Decker said. "Yahoo monetizes very competitively with Google for query ads but is not as competitive in the tail," she said, referring to the long statistical tail consisting of a large number of infrequent searches.