After the upper management shake-up that recently took place with Google this year, it was clear the company was preparing for an all out assault on the market in 2011. In the biggest hiring surge in the company’s tenure, Google has plans to hire a whopping 6000 new employees in 2011.
After Facebook surpassed Google as the most visited site in the U.S in 2010, Google is doing everything in its power to battle Facebook; that includes retaining the talented individuals who already work for the search engine giant. Just last fall Google issued a 10 percent raise for all of its employees.
But as Google moves full speed ahead, their counterpart, Yahoo is pumping their brakes. Facing stiff competition from both Google and Facebook, Yahoo has struggled to keep pace. The quarterly profit was less than encouraging, total revenue decreased 12% to $1.53 billion, and the company issued weaker-than-expected projections for the first quarter of this year, saying it would see revenue between $1.02 billion and $1.08 billion. These projections were below Wall Street’s consensus of $1.125 billion.
But the clear indication about the company’s struggles are the layoffs. The company has announced that it would cut another 1% of its global work force which amounts to roughly 100 workers, it’s Yahoo’s second round of layoffs in the last two months. It’s hard to see how Yahoo is going to gain more revenue by slicing and dicing its workforce. Those advertising dollars are getting thinner and thinner for Yahoo by the day.
