Yahoo Explores Job Cuts in Consumer Group

Yahoo Inc. is evaluating job cuts in its consumer products group, according to people familiar with the matter, as the Internet giant continues to search for ways to turn around its business.ugg tall

Yahoo's chief products officer, Blake Irving, has asked unit heads to prepare operational plans that factor in work force cuts of up to 20%, one person familiar with the matter said. Mr. Irving, who joined Yahoo in April, oversees key properties like the company's home page, finance site and email service.

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AOL Selling Off Part of Dulles Campus. Access thousands of business sources not available on the free web. Learn More .It wasn't immediately known how many employees would be affected, nor whether layoffs would extend beyond Mr. Irving's group, the person said. The products group recently had about 7,000 employees, said another person familiar with the matter.

A spokesman for the Sunnyvale, Calif., company said it "is always evaluating expenses to align with the company's financial goals" but denied the company was planning a 20% reduction across the company. Yahoo currently employs about 14,100 people, the spokesman said.

Any job cuts at Yahoo would follow two previous rounds of layoffs in recent years. The company cut around 700 workers during the second-quarter of 2009, or about 5% of its work force at the time. And it cut about 1,400 employees in December 2008.

The TechCrunch blog reported Thursday that Yahoo was preparing to cut 20% of its staff. Yahoo said the blog post was inaccurate.

Word of possible layoffs at Yahoo comes as other Internet companies, including Google Inc., Facebook Inc., and others are on hiring sprees. Earlier this week Google told its more than 23,000 employees they would get a 10% pay raise in January. ugg short

Yahoo, under the leadership of Chief Executive Carol Bartz, is in the midst of a multiyear turnaround effort that has seen it strike a search pact with Microsoft Corp. so the Internet giant can focus on its core Web properties and its display-advertising business.

But Yahoo has continued to struggle with ad sales, especially in North America, the company's most important region. In October, Yahoo said its total third-quarter revenue rose 1.6%, with revenue from owned and operated display advertising jumping 17%, but search ad sales falling 7%. The company at the time said its third-quarter earnings more than doubled, helped by lower costs and its sale of HotJobs.