After mass layoffs earlier this week, Yahoo is taking its cost-cutting knives to another area of the company. Yahoo is reportedly shutting down Delicious, Yahoo Buzz, MyBlogLog and Alta Vista. So far, the only confirmed closure is Yahoo Buzz.
“Part of our organizational streamlining involves cutting our investment in underperforming or off-strategy products to put better focus on our core strengths and fund new innovation in the next year and beyond,” the company told All Things Digital on Thursday.
“We continuously evaluate and prioritize our portfolio of products and services, and do plan to shut down some products in the coming months such as Yahoo! Buzz, our Traffic APIs, and others,” Yahoo said. “We will communicate specific plans when appropriate.”
A Shrinking Presence
“Yahoo is trying to rationalize and streamline its product lines, especially after cutting heads this week,” said Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. “People are most upset about the possibility that Delicious will be shuttered.”
To others, Sterling continued, all the changes seem to be further evidence of Yahoo’s decline or shrinking nature. As for the future of Yahoo, Sterling said the Internet world will have to wait to see what happens.
“Levinshon and Irving are smart people,” Sterling said. “However, the negative impact on morale has got to be significant. It’s the latest in a series of cuts and reorgs that have taken place over the past two years.”
Mass Layoffs
Earlier this week, Yahoo cut 600 employees, about four percent of its workforce. Yahoo employs about 14,000 workers in Sunnyvale, Calif. Perhaps ironically, CEO Carol Bartz insisted Yahoo was still “hiring every day” as recently as mid-November. Most of the job cuts are expected to come from the product division.
Yahoo has been struggling for years. Enderle said Yahoo is still trying to recover from shunning Microsoft’s acquisition offer in 2008….