Yahoo on Wednesday confirmed plans to lay off more than 2,000 employees as part of new cost-cutting efforts. The Internet giant currently employs approximately 14,000 full-time workers and several thousand more contractors. The workforce reductions will be spread across a number of units within Yahoo including its product division, local business unit, marketing division and research and development division. “Today’s actions are an important next step toward a bold, new Yahoo! — smaller, nimbler, more profitable and better equipped to innovate as fast as our customers and our industry require. We are intensifying our efforts on our core businesses and redeploying resources to our most urgent priorities. Our goal is to get back to our core purpose — putting our users and advertisers first — and we are moving aggressively to achieve that goal,” said Scott Thompson, CEO of Yahoo!. “Unfortunately, reaching that goal requires the tough decision to eliminate positions. We deeply value our people and all they’ve contributed to Yahoo!.” Yahoo plans further cuts in the coming months, and the company’s full statement on the layoffs follows below.

Yahoo! Statement

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — Yahoo! today confirmed that it is taking important next steps to reshape the company for the future.

“Today’s actions are an important next step toward a bold, new Yahoo! — smaller, nimbler, more profitable and better equipped to innovate as fast as our customers and our industry require. We are intensifying our efforts on our core businesses and redeploying resources to our most urgent priorities. Our goal is to get back to our core purpose — putting our users and advertisers first — and we are moving aggressively to achieve that goal,” said Scott Thompson, CEO of Yahoo!. “Unfortunately, reaching that goal requires the tough decision to eliminate positions. We deeply value our people and all they’ve contributed to Yahoo!.”

Yahoo! has a solid foundation — nearly 700 million users and thousands of advertisers that engage with Yahoo! properties regularly and trust the company with their data and their business. Through its restructuring efforts, Yahoo! intends to grow by responding more quickly to customer needs and competing more effectively in areas where it can win. Yahoo! has identified key parts of the business — a select group of core businesses, the platforms that support those core businesses, and the data that drives deep personalization for users and ROI for advertisers — where the company will intensify efforts and redeploy resources globally, all focused on increasing shareholder value. With a clear focus on profitability and growth, the company will be disciplined in its investments and radically simplify how it builds, launches and maintains many of its properties and products.

Today, the company will begin the process of informing employees about these changes. As part of that effort, approximately 2,000 people will be notified of job elimination or phased transition.

Yahoo! expects to realize approximately $375 million of annualized savings upon completion of all employee transitions. The company currently expects to recognize the majority of an estimated $125 to $145 million pretax cash charge relating to employee severance in its second quarter financial results. The company may incur additional charges in connection with this action. More information will be provided about Yahoo!’s future direction in conjunction with the release of its first quarter financial results on April 17, 2012.

Rumors surrounding Google’s cloud storage service are ramping up as we move closer toward the product’s rumored release date. The service will apparently be called Google Drive and is similar to Dropbox, which allows users to store files on cloud servers and access them from computers and mobile devices. According to a leaked screenshot obtained by TalkAndroid, Google Drive will offer 5GB of free storage instead of the previously rumored 1GB. The image also reaffirms that files can be accessed through computers, mobile phones, tablets and via a web browser, and it will allow users to edit a document in one place that will automatically be updated in all locations. Google Drive is rumored to launch the week of April 16th.

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A new study suggests that more than half of all Internet traffic is generated by non-human sources such as hacking software, scrapers and automated spam mechanisms. The majority of this non-human traffic, according to cloud service provider Incapsula, is potentially malicious. The study is based on data collected from 1,000 websites that utilize Incapsula’s services, and it determined that just 49% of Web traffic is human browsing. 20% is benign non-human search engine traffic, but 31% of all Internet traffic is tied to malicious activities. 19% is from ” ‘spies’ collecting competitive intelligence,” 5% is from automated hacking tools seeking out vulnerabilities, 5% is from scrapers and 2% is from content spammers. ”Few people realize how much of their traffic is non-human, and that much of it is potentially harmful,” Incapsula co-founder Marc Gaffan told ZDNet. Incapsula, coincidentally, offers services aimed at securing small and medium businesses.

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Global media watchdog group Reporters Without Borders on Monday released its “Enemies of the Internet” list for 2012. The list is comprised of nations it feels inhibit its citizens’ freedom to express themselves on, or even denies access to, the Internet. Reporters Without Borders’s report focuses a great deal on countries that have reportedly blocked access to social networks and microblogging services in an effort to impede the efforts of activists as they tried to organize fellow citizens. It also updated its “under surveillance” list, which covers countries that may soon be added to the enemies list. Read on for more.

“Online social networks complicate matters for authoritarian regimes that are trying to suppress unwanted news and information,” Reporters Without Borders wrote in its report. ”It was thanks to netizens that Tunisians learned about the street vendor who set himself on fire in Sidi Bouzid and Egyptians learned about Khaled Said, the young netizen who was beaten to death by police outside an Alexandria Internet café. It was thanks to social networks that Sidi Bouzid and Khaled Said became news stories and went on to become cornerstones of the Arab Spring.”

The group points to microblogging services and social networks like Twitter as a means of quickly disseminating information and even organizing against oppressive regimes. In combination with the advent of other recent technologies such as mobile phone-based to video broadcasting, the group says these services are “increasing the possibilities of freeing information from its straightjacket.”

“The mixing of journalism and activism has been accentuated in extreme situations such as Syria, where ordinary citizens, appalled by the bloodshed, are systematically gathering information for dissemination abroad, especially by the international news media, so the outside world knows about the scale of the brutal crackdown taking place,” the group wrote.

New to the “Enemies of the Internet” list this year are Bahrain and a number of other countries, which join the likes of North Korea and China. Egypt, Malaysia, Australia and France find themselves on the group’s ”under surveillance” list, Australia for working with ISPs to create a mechanism for censoring certain online content, and France for filtering Web content and maintaining its “three-strikes” policy, which cuts off Internet access to people found to be downloading copyrighted content illegally three times. Libya was removed from the list following the fall of Moammar Gadhafi.

Reporters Without Borders’s full report can be viewed on the organisation’s website.

Google and other leading advertising companies have been bypassing the privacy settings of millions of unknowing Safari users, reports the Wall Street Journal. Using “a special code,” the companies were able to bypass the browser’s privacy restrictions and install cookies on a user’s computer, even when such actions were supposed to be blocked. Companies such as Google use cookies to track browsing habits across websites that it places advertisements on. Apple’s Safari Web browser blocks these third-party cookies by default, only allowing them on a website that a user directly interacts with. Read on for more.

The Journal’s research found that this “special code” was present in 22 of the top 100 websites when browsing from a computer, and 23 sites when using the iPhone’s browser. The publication notes that “once the coding was activated, it could enable Google tracking across the vast majority of websites.”

The Mountain View-based company has maintained its innocence, claiming its advertising cookies do not collect personal information. “The Journal mischaracterizes what happened and why. We used known Safari functionality to provide features that signed-in Google users had enabled. It’s important to stress that these advertising cookies do not collect personal information,” responded a Google representative.

Vibrant Media, Media Innovation Group and PointRoll all employed a similar code for tracking. Out of all the companies, Google has the largest market share, delivering Internet ads that were viewed at least once by 93% of all U.S. Web users in December. Apple reached out to The Journal and informed the publication that the company is “working to put a stop” to codes that bypass Safari’s privacy settings.

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Tim Berners-Lee, father of the World Wide Web as long as you’re not asking Al Gore, has come out against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) currently causing an Internet uprising. ”If you’re in America then you should go and call somebody or send an email to protest against these bills because they have not been put together to respect human rights as is appropriate in a democratic country,” Berners-Lee told the Sydney Morning Herald. SOPA, which is currently being revised before it is again considered by Congress, would give the U.S. government the ability to block access to foreign websites accused of unlawfully hosting or distributing copyrighted content. Big names such as Google, Wikipedia and Reddit recently protested the bill by temporarily blocking access to their websites or urging users to sign a petition. “It affects all the stuff on the Internet working and something which would affect what you want to connect to, where you want to connect to,” Berners-Lee said. Representative Lamar Smith on Friday said that the House Judiciary Committee would “postpone consideration of the legislation until there is wider agreement on a solution.”

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Amazon’s new web-based Kindle Store for the iPad reportedly helps the online retailer dodge Apple’s fee that it would otherwise pay through a native Amazon Kindle Store iOS application. Amazon’s subscription program typically charges retailers 30% of all generated revenues, which has caused retailers like Amazon to create new ways for customers to purchase goods without having to pay a fee. The Financial Times also recently pulled its application to avoid the same subscription charges, and we would not be surprised if other magazines, newspapers or retail app developers follow suit. It’s unclear if Apple will tweak its terms in an effort to hold on to subscription providers.

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Twitter on Thursday announced a complete redesign of its twitter.com homepage and its iOS and Android applications. “It’s now easier and faster to see the information that matters most to you,” Twitter explained. “Immediately access your favorite features from the left-hand side. Photos, videos and conversations are embedded directly in Tweets so you can see the whole story at a glance. And now everything in Home will appear consistently across computers, iPhones, and Android mobile phones.” We found that Twitter’s homepage has been tweaked ever so slightly: information about your profile, trending topics and “who to follow” has been moved to the left side of the page and the timeline is now on the right. It’s clean, though, and easy to use as always. The iOS application seems more limited than before, and it takes more digging to get to what we want. We’re sticking with Tweetbot on iOS for now since it offers a much more robust feature set.

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BlackBerry users in Africa, the Middle East and Europe have been without service since 11:00 a.m. Monday, The Telegraph reports. A bug on Research In Motion’s server in Slough, England is to blame and it appears to have impaired all users, independent of carrier or device. RIM has not issued a statement on the matter. “There is an issue with BlackBerry services at present,” a T-Mobile UK representative said on Twitter. “RIM [is] investigating this at present.” Additionally, Batelco, a wireless carrier in Bahrain, issued a statement that confirmed the service was out in the entire country and explained the issue is being “dealt with by BlackBerry providers in Canada.”

Thanks Adam!

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When Facebook announced a revamped mobile page in April, its lead mobile exec Eric Tseng said the social network would focus on using the HTML5 standard for future updates instead of updating individual applications for each mobile operating system. “Project Spartan” is the fruit of those labors, reports claim, and it will be the social network’s attempt to the spill its games and applications into the mobile space. Images and information on Project Spartan were recently posted on a Facebook developer page before being pulled. Thankfully TechCrunch grabbed several of the images and information from the site before it was taken down. The leaked photos clearly display a panel loaded with Facebook Pages, mobile apps and events being accessed from an iPhone’s Safari browser. There also appears to be a notifications component. Facebook will officially announce the platform sometime next week, TechCrunch said. Read on a few additional photos of Project Spartan.

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SIMPLE Mobile announced on Friday that its customers can now sign up for several new plans, including a $40 unlimited nationwide talk, text and web option that is available for smartphone users. SIMPLE Mobile also introduced two new BYOB (Bring Your Own BlackBerry) prepaid plans including a $50 option with unlimited talk and text, and a $60 plan that supports “4G” speeds. SIMPLE Mobile is an MVNO that uses T-Mobile’s nationwide network to support its services, so customers interested in the BYOB plan should note that a T-Mobile BlackBerry will be required to take advantage of the carrier’s 4G HSPA+ network. SIMPLE Mobile also introduced a $25 4G nationwide wireless broadband data plan that provides 750MB of data per month, as well as a $45 2GB option. Read on for the full press release.

SIMPLE Mobile® Continues the Wireless Revolution With New Unlimited $40 Everything Plan, Unlimited Everything BlackBerry® Plans and Wireless Broadband Data Plans

Irvine, CA  (September 23, 2011)  SIMPLE Mobile®

(www.mysimplemobile.com) is revolutionizing the wireless world with new plans thatwill change how people think about, and pay for
wireless service! The company that began the SIM card revolution in 2009 with their innovative B.Y.O.P. (Bring Your Own Phone) program, is shaking up the wireless landscape once again by introducing a multitude of new pre-paid, flat-rate plans on one of the strongest nationwide networks. Effective September 23, 2011, SIMPLE Mobile will be offering a $40 Unlimited Nationwide Talk, Text & Web plan, two BlackBerry specific plans and two 4G Nationwide Wireless Broadband plans that are going to unite mobile users across the US against overpriced wireless service.

SIMPLE Mobile¹s $40 Unlimited Nationwide Talk, Text and Web plan gives smart phone users (including Android devices) more of what they want, for less money. The plan includes unlimited talk, unlimited domestic and international text messaging, in addition to unlimited Web access at up to 3G speeds on a major national network. When compared to the competition, this new $40 Unlimited plan is the best value in the business. This plan rounds out SIMPLE Mobile’s other voice offerings, which includes their $25 Unlimited 15-Day Talk & Text plan and their $60 Unlimited Nationwide Talk, Text & 4G High
Speed Web plan.

Due to popular demand, SIMPLE Mobile will now be offering two unlimited B.Y.O.B. (Bring Your Own BlackBerry) pre-paid, flat rate plans. The $50 BlackBerry plan includes unlimited talk, unlimited text (domestic and international), BlackBerry Email (BIS), BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), access to the BlackBerry App World and unlimited Web browsing at up to 3G speeds. The $60 BlackBerry plan contains everything in the $50 plan, but also includes high speed Web browsing at up to 4G speeds. Additional information on features and supported devices can be found on SIMPLE Mobile¹s BlackBerry plans page at www.mysimplemobile.com/BlackBerry.

For wireless broadband devices, such as GSM tablets and USB data sticks, SIMPLE Mobile is debuting $25 and $45 4G Nationwide Wireless Broadband plans. The $25 plan provides access up to 750MB of high speed Web connectivity for a consecutive 30-day period. For heavier users, the $45 plan allows for up to 2GB of high speed Web access, also during a consecutive 30-day period.

“SIMPLE Mobile is continuing the mission of giving today¹s new generation of wireless consumers what they want. Great national coverage, no contracts and the flexibility of bringing your own phone at amazing, flat rate price options,” commented Tim Garrett, SVP of Marketing for SIMPLE Mobile. “The old way of paying for wireless in the US is dying a slow death. People across the country are quickly realizing that SIMPLE Mobile’s hassle free way of wireless is a better option.”

As with all of SIMPLE Mobile’s wireless plans, these new offerings come without contracts, credit checks, or hidden fees. More information on SIMPLE Mobile and the company¹s new plans can be found online at http://www.mysimplemobile.com.

In an effort to edge in on MetroPCS and Sprint-owned Boost and Virgin Mobile, Verizon Wireless will introduce a brand new $50 monthly prepaid this week that includes unlimited text, talk and web, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. The new plan, which first launched back in April as “Unleashed” in limited markets, will be available to customers in Verizon stores, Walmart, Target and Best Buy. The new plan is much cheaper than Verizon’s current unlimited talk and text prepaid option, which currently costs $94.99 per month. “This is a very competitive market, and we want to make sure we have a price portfolio to fit a greater number of customers,” Verizon Wireless spokeswoman Brenda Raney said. “In these times there are some people who would prefer living on a prepaid plan.” Read on for more.

Here’s what Verizon’s competitors charge: AT&T’s GoPhone service offers the same unlimited options and costs $50 per month. Virgin Mobile’s service costs $55 per month although there are cheaper options for customers who want fewer minutes. MetroPCS offers a nationwide unlimited plan for $45 per month but customers can also opt for more expensive 4G prepaid packages. Boost Mobile’s service costs $50 per month but can drop as low as $35 per month as part of its “monthly shrinkage” perk for making on-time payments.

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Antitrust investigators with the Federal Trade Commission are focusing on Google’s Android operating system and web search services, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Reportedly, there is some concern that Google prevents its Android partners from implementing services provided by Google’s competitors to their smartphones. One example comes from backin May, when Google blocked Motorola from using Skyhook Wireless’ location services on its phones. The FTC is also investigating whether Google promotes its own services over its rivals, and whether it actually uses data that its competitors have collected, such as local reviews, to populate its own results. The FTC announced that it was opening an investigation into Google’s business practices on June 24th and, at the time, Google said that it was not clear what the FTC’s concerns were. The search giant said that it will cooperate fully and will continue to follow its five pillars: “do what’s best for the user,” “provide the most relevant answers as quickly as possible,” “label advertisements clearly,” “be transparent,” and “loyalty, not lock-in.”

When Google first introduced its Chrome operating system, the search giant touted its rock solid security. In an effort to keep hackers out, Google automatically installs the operating system on three different hard drive partitions: one swap partition, one encrypted user partition and one read-only operating system root partition. Despite those security enhancements, VentureBeat says researchers Kyle Osborn and Matt Johanson of White Hat Security’s Threat Research Center were able to break into the operating system using “web-based hacker tricks,” that provided access to Google Docs, the address book, Google Voice messages and emails. The two hackers demonstrated how easy it was during the Black Hat security conference. “This conversation is about the web, not Chrome OS,” a Google spokesperson told VentureBeat. “Chromebooks raise security protections on computing hardware to new levels. They are also better equipped to handle the web attacks that can affect browsers on any computing device, thanks in part to a carefully designed extensions model and the advanced security available through Chrome that many users and experts have embraced.”

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