Press release: [pressroom.yahoo.net...]

Yahoo! expects to realize approximately $375 million of annualized savings upon completion of all employee transitions.

CEO Scott Thompson's letter to employees:

Core Media and Communications: Our content, media, and communications experiences must be best in class. That includes getting today’s core properties right and innovating on a next generation of great product experiences across all screens.∙

Platforms: We must make our core platforms and systems a genuine strength for Yahoo! – platforms that we can really leverage to support our massive scale, drive the deepest personalization, and boost speed to market.∙

Data: Our massive data sets must become a genuine competitive advantage for Yahoo!. We have to unlock the value in our data to allow us to really understand our 700 million users, encourage and win their engagement and trust, leverage everything they do with us to more fully personalize their experiences, and to give our advertisers the immediate insights they are rightfully demanding.

[blogs.wsj.com...]

[edited by: eelixduppy at 3:04 pm (utc) on Apr 4, 2012]

$375,000,000 / 2,000 = $187,500 per employee on average. I assume that includes benefits and salary.

Looks like property values in silicon valley will be dropping again.

Core Media and Communications: Our content, media, and communications experiences must be best in class. That includes getting today’s core properties right and innovating on a next generation of great product experiences across all screens.∙

Platforms: We must make our core platforms and systems a genuine strength for Yahoo! – platforms that we can really leverage to support our massive scale, drive the deepest personalization, and boost speed to market.∙

Data: Our massive data sets must become a genuine competitive advantage for Yahoo!. We have to unlock the value in our data to allow us to really understand our 700 million users, encourage and win their engagement and trust, leverage everything they do with us to more fully personalize their experiences, and to give our advertisers the immediate insights they are rightfully demanding.

Translation please?

Translation please?

Make stuff better, make new stuff faster. More emphasis on mobile.

Our infrastructure kinda sucks. Improve networking hardware and core software.

Follow Google and Microsoft by taking into consideration user data and actions across all Yahoo properties for personalization and advertising purposes. Data mine more effectively for use in decision making.

Translation please?

"We'll be back to our commercials after a brief word from our sponsored website."

translation please?

Didn't your economics professor tell you? When dealing with dumb investors use big words and sound self important! He/she never said it had to make sense.

I assume that includes benefits and salary.

It probably includes facility closure(s) as well as some lump sum payments.

TIP: If you're at Yahoo! and you're not 'in the know' and you receive an offer of either taking a severance package or moving to a lesser position with an equal pay guarantee... I'd take the money. When you're done your (usually 6 months) at the new position you can be dumped without the compensation because your 'benefits' are based on length of time in the NEW position. I'm NOT a professional adviser but I lived through this in the late 90's, if they wanted you they would not be offering you an out, imo. It's all about the money, as you can tell by the self important savings gibberish press release.

Side note: The article says Yahoo! hired Boston Consulting Group to decide their path forward? There is officially NO leadership within Yahoo! right now else they'd be making their own decisions.

translation please?

Data Mining: Scrape images from sites while using User-Agent: *missing* from various IPs from 98.139 range

I think it's sad really. It's the beginning of the decline.

Translation please?

...the underlying meaning can be found in the lyrics to Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb".

Personally, I've seen Yahoo! as a sleeping giant -- one of the only true portals on the planet -- one that could actually make a resurgence.

It's the beginning of the decline.

That was way back when the hired Terry "Hollywood" Semel to come in and run a tech company.

They could (or maybe could have) made a resurgence but they always seem to fire the brains, outsource the tech and replaced it with TV ads and ineffective outrageously overpaid executives. Yahoo! is a shell that will continue a slow decline. They will continue to cut costs to increase profitability until the only thing left to cut is the overgrown grass outside an empty headquarters.

Personally, I've seen Yahoo! as a sleeping giant -- one of the only true portals on the planet -- one that could actually make a resurgence.

Amen, the homepage is a great browser default home page candidate because anything you might want to see can be found right there.

My personal fav: Fantasy sports. Top notch free/paid service, if they mess that up we're going to have words! I use the finance section and the sports/movies/weather a bunch too. I can't say I like the fluff (OMG, Horoscopes, Games etc) but many do and they are well done.

yahoo isn't a search engine, they're an amazing portal. Sad to see such a colossal lack of leadership doing them in. Make a call leaderguy, and I don't mean a call to ask for opinions or outsourcing, use your own!

I think Yahoo has basically become a content site these days, similar to BBC or the CNN but with much less prestige. Unless they merge with Microsoft, I feel they will become more irelavant in in the next year or two. I dont see Yahoo surviving for another 5 years unless they merge or get taken over.

*irrelevant