November 11, 2008 by Matt Thomas
Regular followers of computer and technology news will know about the relentless misery currently confronting Yahoo. First their share price plummets, then Google backs out of their proposed ad sharing deal – widely considered as a last ditch effort to stay afloat -, now it seems Microsoft have lost all interest in buying the company after trying so aggressively to do so in the past. They are, to put it mildly, in some trouble.
The long term survival chances of the world’s second biggest search-engine now look pretty bleak, especially considering the news that they are about to shed ten per cent of their workforce, that’s 1’500 jobs, a figure that’s particularly staggering when you consider that the company already laid-off around 1000 people earlier in the year. On top of this, they’re also hemorrhaging key workers, like executives and engineers, which is going to make it even harder to compete with the overachievers that Google and Microsoft can attract. The long and short of it is this, Yahoo is very unlikely to have a long-term future, certainly not as an independent entity.
Insiders at Yahoo are calling them a technological casualty of the credit crunch. However, many independent experts disagree, claiming that Yahoo has been without a coherent direction or plan for some time now and the economic downturn has simply exacerbated things to the point where it looks as if they’re set to pay dearly for their indecision.
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