Just like everyone expected: Yahoo slashes 600 jobs

In a highly expected move, Yahoo has finally lowered the gavel on over 600 jobs, representing a 4% downturn of the tech company’s employee base.

Yahoo has been desperately trying to re-gain it’s share of the hearts and minds of online users.

With Facebook and Google commanding more and more of the display advertising market, it’s hard to predict whats on the horizon for achieving this. In a statement released by the online giant’s spokesperson (via email), they mentioned, “personnel changes are part of our ongoing strategy to best position Yahoo! for revenue growth.”

So, you plan on replacing these jobs with other positions to drive growth?

Apparantly so. The Yahoo spokesman went on to say they will, “continue to hire on a global basis to support our key priorities,”

Sounds like a plan.

Even though Yahoo has made some interesting moves in 2010, including their alliance with Microsoft, these cuts are nothing new to those who follow the tech industry.

Last month, Tech Crunch first made mention of the looming destruction with All Things D reporting on a 10% cut, later that day.

With managers leaving, and an already irritated (to put it nicely) stockholder base, CEO Carol Bartz is gonna have to turn into a miracle worker rather quickly.

She gained a little bit of good will with the Microsoft Manager, however despite cutting costs and infrastructure, her inability to increase revenue and target loyal advertisers. . . could end up costing her.

We’re not sure if Yahoo’s recent decision to remove all Yahoo! Videos content is part of this overall plan. Guess that remains to be seen.

Here is their kind but direct message:

On December 15, 2010 the functionality to upload a video to Yahoo! Video was removed and a download utility, available through March 14, 2011, was added to users’ video profiles to allow retrieval of content. The user-generated content will be removed from Yahoo! Video on March 15, 2011. We apologize if this causes you any inconvenience.

So. .  .Original Yahoo search is dead. Display advertising has dropped. An un-popular CEO. Mad Stockholders. What’s next?

It looks like they need some Jerry Yang and David Filo pixi dust to come and revive things. And, all those angry stockholders say togther, “please anything but that.”

Let us know what you think about Yahoo’s trip to the poor house. We love to hear your thoughts.

As always, it’s gonna be a fun ride.