Yahoo to Fire 650 to 700 People

The Yahoo layoffs we've been hearing about are coming as early as tomorrow. Five percent of Yahoo's workforce is to be let go, about 650 to 700 people, mostly in the US and from the product division. The notifications are to be send out tomorrow and the layoffs are effective immediately.

News of the layoffs first hit about a month ago and the numbers seem to have been accurate.

Yahoo has been undergoing some heavy cost cutting and, though there was to be no more layoffs after an initial wave, it seems like the company has to once again trim some fat, in the easiest way, by letting people go.

The new wave of layoffs will see some 650 to 700 people lose their jobs. That's about five percent of Yahoo's 14,000 strong total work force or 10 percent of the product division which will bear the grunt.

The layoffs will mostly come in the US, though there may some in other places and outside of the product division.

As far as layoffs go, right before Christmas is the worst timing but Yahoo probably wanted to enter the new year, and the next quarter with a lighter burden.

Yahoo has been under the knife for more than a year and a half ever since new CEO Carol Bartz took over. She has already overseen several waves of layoffs as well as the outsourcing of some of Yahoo's products.

The biggest move was giving up in the search race and starting to use Bing to power searches and ads on Yahoo. Yahoo also outsourced its dating, job listings and other sites.

The focus is on building Yahoo as a content powerhouse, with the recently launched Contributors Network playing a big part of that, and on integrating social features from the likes of Facebook and Twitter.