Yahoo continues to suffer

(By Richard Holway 7.00am 22nd Apr 09) Although Yahoo has been in trouble for many years, it is still an indicator of certain parts of the sector - online advertising in particular. Yahoo's latest quarterly results were pretty dire with revenues down 13% at $1.58b and net revenues down 78% at a mere £118m. New CEO, Carol Bartz is continuing the job cull. If you remember 1500 went in Nov/Dec 08, 1000 in Feb 09 and now another 700 of the 13,500 workforce are to go.

Bartz says she wants Yahoo to focus Yahoo more on its strengths in "online news, finance, sports, e-mail and Internet search". Problem is that it is a distant second in many of those to Google.

The only bit of Yahoo I use is the Finance pages - which i think are superb. Problem is that i can't remember any of the ads and have certainly never clicked on any of them. It is a 'free resource' in every sense. That is not a viable business model.

PS - Bartz refused to comment on rumours of renewed talks with Microsoft. Again my views on this long-running saga are well-known. Go4it if you are Yahoo. Steer well clear of you are Microsoft except at a rock-bottom price.