Thursday, October 23, 2008

Yahoo firing 1,500 workers; 3Q profit falls 64 pct (AP)

Posted on Tue Oct 21, 2008 6:56PM EDT

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. will fire at least 1,500 workers to cope with a crumbling economy that dented its third-quarter profit and turned up the heat on the slumping Internet company's management as investors stew over a missed opportunity to sell to Microsoft Corp. for $47.5 billion.

The purge outlined Tuesday represents a 10 percent reduction in Yahoo's payroll of about 15,000 employees. It's the second time in nine months that Yahoo has resorted to mass layoffs in what so far has been an ineffectual effort to rebound from a financial funk that has left its stock price near a 5 1/2-year low.

Yahoo's housecleaning, to be completed by the end of the year, provides the latest example of how a credit crisis that has already rocked banks and retailers is starting to rattle Silicon Valley, the nation's high-tech heartland.

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