Yahoo to Lay off Thousands: Report

Yahoo Inc is planning to undergo a major restructuring of the company, which will include lay-off of many employees.

Going by a report in the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital blog, the internet giant is getting ready to lay off thousands of workers. It is expected that Chief Executive Scott Thompson, who took the post in Yahoo in January, will be making the announcement by the end of this month.

As we have indicated, our leadership is engaged in a process that will generate significant strategic change at Yahoo, but final decisions have not yet been made at this point. Beyond that, we will not comment, the company said in a statement.

Yahoo had 14,100 employees at the end of 2011. It is continuing face stiff competition from Google in the search business in which it has already lost a major market share.

In January, it reported the fourth-quarter profit, which reflected a decline in revenues and a higher tax provision. For the fourth quarter, the company's net earnings dropped 5 percent to $295.6 million from $312.0 million in the year ago quarter.

Gross profit for the quarter was 70.2 percent compared to 63.4 percent last year. For the full year, the company earned $1.049 billion or $0.82 per share, down from $1.232 billion or $0.90 per share for fiscal year 2010. The company is certainly in need of more of ad revenues for strengthening its performance.

This year, Yahoo has been in search for techniques to improve efficiency and effectiveness and, as an initial step, had appointed PayPal president Scott Thompson as the new CEO and director of the company.