Amid mounting layoffs in technology companies, Yahoo, on Thursday, announced its plans to lay off 20% of its workforce by the end of this year. About 1,000 employees will be asked to leave by the end of this week and by the end of six months, another 600 jobs will be terminated. The layoffs will happen in the ad tech division as part of a restructuring of the company's ads team, Yahoo for Business. The team’s workforce will be cut to 50% by the end of 2023.
Yahoo’s spokesperson said that the company’s ads business has not been profitable and that their new division Yahoo Advertising will focus on their “demand-side platform”, and products such as Yahoo Finance, Yahoo News and Yahoo Sports. Yahoo will also close its supply-side platform and move their advertising work to Taboola with whom they signed a 30-year partnership. Yahoo believes these changes will strengthen their advertising business and “deliver better value to customers and partners". Apollo Global Management bought Yahoo and AOL from Verizon Media in 2021 and operates it as Yahoo.
The news comes at a time when tech companies like Microsoft and Google are heavily chasing the AI-powered search engines and chatbots. On the other hand, impending recession and cost-cutting measures are pushing several tech and media companies to let go of their employees. Microsoft-led GitHub announced yesterday that they would lay off 10% of their workforce and cut-down office space. This announcement continues with Microsoft’s laying off of 10,000 employees who contribute to 5% of their global workforce. Google will also cut down approximately 6%, that is 12,000 jobs.
On Wednesday, Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, announced that 7,000 employees would be laid off by targeting a total of $5.5 billion in cost savings. This accounts for 3% of their workforce. Some of the other big tech layoffs announcements that happened in the last few weeks include, Zoom, which is letting go of 15% of or 1,300 employees, eBay laying off 4% of their workforce (500 employees), PayPal letting go of 7% of the workforce (2,000 employees), SAP with 2.5% of the workforce or 2,800 employees, IBM 1.5% that is 3900 employees, and Dell to cut short 6,000 employees which makes 5% of their workforce.
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