Yahoo Cutting About 600 Jobs, or 4% of Its Workforce

Yahoo! Inc., owner of the largest U.S. Web portal, is cutting about 600 jobs, or about 4 percent of its workforce, part of an almost two-year turnaround effort.

The notification process began today and most of the cuts will come from the product group, said Kim Rubey, a spokeswoman for Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo. The company plans to offer workers severance packages and outplacement services.

“Today’s personnel changes are part of our ongoing strategy to best position Yahoo for revenue growth and margin expansion and to support our strategy to deliver differentiated products to the marketplace,” the company said in an e-mailed statement. “We’ll continue to hire on a global basis to support our key priorities.”

Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz, who joined Yahoo in January 2009, made a larger round of cuts last year, in addition to shutting underperforming websites. The company has struggled to stanch a migration of users and advertising dollars to Facebook Inc., which Yahoo now sees as its biggest rival. Facebook passed Yahoo as the top seller of online display ads in the U.S. a year ago, based on the number of times an ad is viewed, according to Reston, Virginia-based ComScore Inc.

Yahoo fell 7 cents to $16.63 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The stock is little changed in value this year.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Womack in San Francisco at bwomack1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net

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Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz

Ramin Talaie/Bloomberg

Yahoo! Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz speaking in New York.

Yahoo! Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz speaking in New York. Photographer: Ramin Talaie/Bloomberg

Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Carol Bartz, chief executive officer of Yahoo! Inc., says the company's biggest rival is Facebook Inc. and that its top-line growth will "really start taking off" in 2012. She spoke yesterday with Norman Pearlstine, Bloomberg News chief content officer, at a Bloomberg Businessweek Captains of Industry event in New York. Bloomberg's Erik Schatzker reports. (Source: Bloomberg)