That’s right – you heard it here after you read about it in other places – the announcement by Yahoo of poor earnings and 1500 layoffs is not even half the story.  ValleyWag has one thought about the definition of a layoff and I think Owen Thomas is spot spot on.  He’s basically saying that by raising the standard during upcoming reviews Yahoo will shame or anger a large percentage of their remaining employees to leave on their own – thus sacrificing their severance.

My opinion on the other side of this is simple: additional savings will come from eliminating part time and contract personnell from their payrolls.  This is a common ploy and I’m sure that Yahoo is used to playing this model.  Good for them – they should be around 500 people and then I think the market will be happy with their prospects (it’s a web company for Christ’s sake.)  It’ll never get there, but I’m hopeful.

I’m just wondering, now that the dust has cleared, how stupid do these people feel for not letting the Microsoft Acquisition play out a little further?  Really, do you think Microsoft wants Google to be as successful as they’ve been?  No, and if you believe that it’s a no-brainer that they’d be willing to throw some additional funding to anyone able to even partially erode Google’s dominance in the search space.

Ranter