Yahoo hasn’t done overly well when it released its figures to the public. Their net profit for Q3 2008 was US$54 million down from US$151 million for the same period in 2007.
Overall revenue figure of SU$1.78 billion is only 1% increase from Q3 last year.
Yahoo has struggled compared to the like of Google, MySpace and Facebook. Seems like the worldwide crises have hit Yahoo! pretty hard as people close their wallets on advertising budgets.
The company announced that they expect “to reduce its global workforce by at least 10% during Q4 of 2008″. This will reduce their costs by approx $400 million. When asked during a phone interview when Yahoo! intends to do so, Jerry Yang, CEO of Yahoo!, said “We want to do it before the holidays”.
Yahoo is yet to get an approval from the US Justice Department in regards to their deal with Google and if it can go ahead. A decision is expected soon.
However, should the deal go through Yahoo would make millions (as I am sure Google would too). Over the last 3 months Yahoo!’s shares have dropped over 40%, but rose 7% (in after trading hours) when the layoffs were announced.
Maybe Microsoft can pull them out from this mess – this time at say $15 a share? Come on Steve Ballmer, make that phone call!
After dropping out from Harvard, and spending most of his day in a garage back in 1970s, multi-billionaire Bill Gates will be leaving Microsoft this week.
It has taken 3 people to fill the shoes of the man who started it all. Chief Software Architect will be Ray Ozzie, Chief Research and Strategy Office will be Craig Mundie and infamous Steve Ballmer will be the CEO.
While Bill will stay on Microsoft board as Chairman, his focus will be on his personal charity – The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Analysts say that Bill leaving could impact the direction or image of the company. Bill Gates is the heart of Microsoft, and he pushed it to where it is today. With his departure, the executive directors are all responsible to preserve that image.
It has taken 1 year for Bill Gates to officially step out of this position to hand over to the above 3 mentioned successors. However, in that past year while Bill has stepped away from the operation management of Microsoft, several hiccups have been made. For example, launching the new Office and Windows platforms – it’s been a year since those products have been released, but the strategy of them replacing its predecessors haven’t been successful. In fact, customers prefer to stay on XP rather than upgrading.
It’s almost like Microsoft has no answer in what to do next – and all this while Apple’s OS is gaining traction.
Aside from the Desktop Market, Microsoft has to deal with it’s ever-growing competitor Google – who now offer free online document collaboration tools called Google Docs.
Then there was the whole failure of Microsoft – Yahoo takeover of nearly US$50 billion.
On the flip side, the server and tools division are the bread and butter of Microsoft’s profits. While it’s entertainment unit, which makes Xbox and it’s games are yet to record a profit.
A founder and CEO of a company has so much more value added that they are sometimes invisible to where the company is heading – though they are the ones making those little tweaks which are often never realised.
Did Gates leave at the right time? Will he ever come back? Where will Microsoft be positioned in 5 to 10 years time?