December 16, 2010, 5:42 PM — Just two days after Yahoo announced the layoff of 650 employees -- about 4 percent of its workforce -- another shoe appears to be dropping. And this one will land squarely on a number of web-based services that are familiar names to millions of Internet users.
(Also see: Note to Yahoo: Layoffs aren't a turnaround strategy)
As Mashable's Jolie O'Dell reports, the embattled company had an "all-hands" meeting on Thursday in which a presented slide showed eight services listed in the "sunset" -- i.e. doomed -- category.
Among them are Yahoo Buzz, Yahoo Picks, Yahoo Bookmarks, MyBlogLog, bookmarking service Delicious and formerly popular web search engine AltaVista. I guess this means we can stop waiting for that AltaVista IPO.
A screenshot of the slide -- which you can see below -- made its way to Twitter. (Which leads me to this observation: If then-new CEO Carol Bartz had followed through on her threat in January 2009 to “drop-kick to f***ing Mars” Yahoo employees who leaked internal information to the outside world, we'd now have a thriving colony of Earthlings on the Red Planet.)
The slide has two other columns, listing services to be merged (though it doesn't specify how) and other services that Yahoo intends to feature, such as Yahoo Deals, Yahoo Avatars, Yahoo Alerts and language translator Yahoo Babel Fish (developed, ironically, by AltaVista).
There's no doubt Yahoo spread itself way too thin in recent years, which is one of the reasons it lost its identity -- lack of focus. This looks like a major effort to begin streamlining.
I couldn't begin to speculate whether the properties Yahoo is choosing to shutter, or the properties it's doubling down on, are the right calls. Or whether the moves are enough (there very likely are more changes to come).
Readers are welcome to weigh in.
Chris Nerney writes about the business side of technology market strategies and trends, legal issues, leadership changes, mergers, venture capital, IPOs and technology stocks. Follow him on Twitter @ChrisNerney.
Follow Chris on Google+
