Yahoo to cut 15-20% jobs

Yahoo Inc is planning to announce cutbacks later this month that will likely lead to hundreds of job losses at the nearly 14,000 employee company, a source familiar with the plan said.

Yahoo spokeswoman Diana Wong declined to comment on a report published on the Silicon Alley Insider blog, which said Yahoo has created a list of “1,500-2,500 jobs that may be eliminated in the next two weeks.”

The source said the report significantly exaggerated the scale of the potential layoffs, the exact number of which is still being settled, but which will be announced around the time the company reports year-end results on January 29.

“There will be some reductions in the workforce,” the source told Reuters. “It would likely be in the hundreds.”

Yahoo's workforce stood at close to 14,000 at end-2007, up around 2,600, or 23 per cent, from the 11,600 employed a year earlier, according to company filings.

The company's headcount had grown 16 per cent in 2006 and 29 per cent in 2005. The source said Yahoo expects to end 2008 with the same number it had going into this year -- close to 14,000 -- which would suggest some selective hiring in focus areas offset by cutbacks in other businesses.

Writing on Silicon Valley Insider, former Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget said Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang was still deciding whether to go ahead with the layoffs -- and could pull out of the plan if the stock price rebounded.

“We believe Yahoo should reduce headcount by at least a thousand people,” Blodget said, noting that for months, Sanford C Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay has called on Yahoo to make steep job cuts of 15-20 per cent to reinvigorate the stock.

The Internet media company has been seeking to refocus its business around three key themes in order to stoke its flagging growth in the face of competition from search rival Google Inc and fast-growing social networks such as Facebook.

Yahoo has been struggling to recover from two years of competitive setbacks that has led revenue growth slow to around 12 per cent or about one-third of its previous growth rate.

Analysts expect revenue from the recent fourth quarter to grow around 15 per cent, according to data from Reuters Estimates.

As part a turnaround plan, the company elevated co-founder Yang to become CEO last June. Together with President Sue Decker, Yahoo has shed low-performing businesses while making several small-to medium-sized acquisitions.

But to date, it has resisted calls by Wall Street analysts and some investors to take several more drastic steps including large-scale layoffs, outsourcing of its Web search business to Google or a potential merger with Microsoft Corp.

Layoffs will focus on areas of the business that do not fit within the three main strategies the company has focused on under Yang. These are to make Yahoo.com the “starting point” for more Web users, to make its online ads a “must buy” for advertisers and to open up its sites to outside developers.

The focus of the cuts will be on “anything that doesn't target the three Big Bets,” the source said.

Information is market power: Google

Google attacked European parliamentarians and privacy advocates for trying to have competition authorities consider the handling of personal information in its $3.1 billion takeover of rival DoubleClick.

The argument was the centerpiece of a European Parliament hearing to consider the burgeoning role of the Internet in impinging on the privacy of citizens.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) signed off last month on Google's $3.1 billion deal which combines its dominance in pay-per-click Internet advertising with DoubleClick's market-leading position in display ads.

After listening to a visiting FTC commissioner, US and European privacy advocates and European parliamentarians question the impact of the deal on European citizens' online privacy, Google's global privacy counsel shot back.

“People (are) trying to take a privacy case and shoehorn it into a competition law review ... I can understand that people continue to peddle this theory in Europe after having lost in the United States,” Peter Fleischer said.

His attack did little to calm the waters.

“The reason you want to have the data is because it gives you a competitive advantage. It is business. I don't think they can be completely disconnected. And we should discuss that side of things too,” said Sophie in 't Veld, the Dutch parliamentarian who sought the hearing.

She called information a competitive factor and declared, “Having that much information is market power.”

Federal Trade Commissioner Pamela Harbour said her four colleagues at the FTC had taken a traditional approach and excluded questions of privacy in their decision. She dissented.

“I believe a traditional approach does not capture the interests of all the parties. There is no proxy for the consumer whose privacy is at stake,” she said.

The European Commission has said it will not take privacy into consideration. In the past six years, it has not turned down any all-US deal approved by US authorities.

Fleischer, asked about the deal rationale, said Google wanted to get into banner advertising. He said his firm did not build dossiers on individuals through searches, instead using the words of each search to decide what ads to display with it.

Contractual limits would prevent Google from using DoubleClick information from individuals, he said.

Stavros Lambrinidis of Greece, who chaired the meeting, asked whether Google turned information over to government authorities.

Fleisher said that if authorities go “through a valid legal process we will respond to it.”

Firefox leaks info useful to hackers

Mozilla's chief of security has confirmed a bug in Firefox that could expose a user's private data. The flaw gives attackers unauthorised access to data on a victim's machine.

The confirmation has been posted on Mozilla's blog by researcher Gerry Eisenhaur. According to the blog, the bug resides in Firefox's chrome protocol scheme and allows directory traversal when certain types of extensions are installed.

Eisenhaur has posted sample code that reads the contents of a Mozilla Thunderbird preferences file, however he believes that attackers could get access to some more information with variations on his attack.

“It's possible to load any JavaScript file on a victim's machine,” he wrote in the blog. “This looks very interesting and may have bigger potential, but for now, it's just another information disclosure.”

He says, “A visited attacking page is able to load images, scripts, or stylesheets from known locations on the disk. Attackers may use this method to detect the presence of files which may give hacker information about which applications are installed. This information may be used to profile the system for a different kind of attack.”

“Some extensions may store information in Javascript files and an attacker may be able to retrieve those,” he added.

However, according to Eisenhaur, “Users are only at risk if they have one of the “flat” packaged add-on installed.” Examples of popular add-ons that are vulnerable include: Download Statusbar and Greasemonkey.

World's Most Expensive Bikini Is Made of D Flawless diamonds

With a price tag over US$ 30,000,000, there are few people on the Earth who can offer to buy this extreme luxurious bikini.

Designed by Susan Rosen, the bikini can best be worn only at beaches. True confession, its fall into the lingerie category is not justifiable as the fabric used for this bikini is a layer of pure diamonds and not a bit of clothe.

Model Molly Sims flaunted this designer bikini and is residing at the centerfold of the 2006 Illustrated Sports Swimsuit issue. The bikini is packed with over 150 carats of D Flawless diamonds.

Other ornamental diamonds include:

1) 51 carat D Flawless Pear Shape
2) 30 carat D Flawless Emerald Cut
3) 15 carat D Flawless Rounds (pair)
4) Platinum-set 8 carat D Flawless Pear Shape (pair)