Yahoo is denying reports that the company is in the midst of a 20% of its workforce.
Rumors began swirling late in line Thursday afternoon, when high-technology blog TechCrunch, citing unnamed sources, reported that the online company is preparing to lay off 20% of its staff of about 14,000, or 2,800 people.
The company does not deny that there are layoffs in the works, but is trying to blunt the report. “Yahoo is always assessing the costs to align with the company’s financial objectives,” said Representative Dana Lengkeek Computerworld Yahoo e-mail. “However, a reduction of 20% of the staff of Yahoo in general is misleading and inaccurate.”
Speculation about Yahoo layoffs comes just a day after reports surfaced that another Internet icon, Google, was about to deliver 10% pay raise across the board to start the new year.
Once the Internet giant and pioneer Yahoo has slipped away from second place to Google in the hot search market, which recently launched Yahoo conducted its own search engine and entered into an agreement with Microsoft to use Bing search for all sites in Yahoo.
Last month, the Internet was abuzz with speculation that AOL was interested in buying Yahoo.
Citing unnamed sources, The Wall Street Journal reported that AOL’s plan to buy Yahoo was so preliminary discussions had not even included came to Yahoo.
“AOL and Yahoo put together is like tying two stones together to make one float” by Gabriel Consulting Group analyst Dan Olds said before a possible deal between Yahoo and AOL.