As Yahoo’s struggles continue, the company is looking to cut costs and dig up cash wherever it can. Yahoo announced plans last month to lay off 2,000 workers, or nearly 15% of its staff, and before that it filed a “puzzling” patent lawsuit against long-time partner Facebook. Now, Yahoo will sell half of its 40% stake in China-based retail giant Alibaba. Led by Chinese Internet entrepreneur Jack Ma, Alibaba will repurchase part of Yahoo’s holdings in the e-commerce firm for $7.1 bill...

Microsoft has hired 14 Yahoo researchers for its brand new New York research lab, AllThingsD reported. The hires come after Yahoo made significant layoffs last month to its research and development unit. According to Jennifer Chayes, who manages Microsoft Research in New England and New York, the researchers were’t hired as a package deal. “I don’t feel like we hired a group; I feel like we hired 15 amazing individuals, some of which became available because there were some problems at Yahoo,...

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, m...

Yahoo filed a massive patent infringement lawsuit against Facebook last month, claiming that Facebook’s News Feed, advertising methods, privacy settings and more infringed on its intellectual property. Facebook on Tuesday fired back at Yahoo with a countersuit, accusing the company of infringing upon 10 of its patents. Among its claims, the social networking giant says Yahoo’s Flickr photostream and its recent activity feature infringe a Facebook patent related to generating a personalized feed of s...

Yahoo has filed a massive patent infringement lawsuit against its business partner, Facebook, AllThingsD reported on Monday. The search company claims that Facebook’s News Feed, advertising methods, privacy settings and more infringe its patents. “Facebook’s entire social network model, which allows users to create profiles for and connect with, among other things, persons and businesses, is based on Yahoo’s patented social networking technology,” Yahoo’s lawsuit said. The company claims t...

Nikesh Arora, Google’s SVP and Chief Business Officer, will run Motorola once the Google acquisition closes later this year, according to rumor published by Business Insider. Arora ran the company’s international business for Eric Schmidt, taking over the global business after the former CEO stepped down. Arora has reportedly been “agitating” for a CEO position and was included on a short list of candidates to head Yahoo. It is possible, however, that a promised CEO slot at Motorola c...

Yahoo has frozen its hiring process and may even consider layoffs according to a new report. The news was revealed by AllThingsD on Thursday, which wrote that the choices were made ahead of expected weak fourth quarter earnings. Yahoo isn’t considering mass layoffs, however; instead, AllThingsD said they are likely to be “small and selective” if they happen at all. Yahoo experienced a bit of turmoil earlier this week when co-founder, former CEO and board member Jerry Yang resigned from the c...

Co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang has resigned from all of his positions with Yahoo, the company announced in a press release on Tuesday. Yang co-founded Yahoo in 1995 with David Filo and served as a member of the Board of Directors since March 1995. Yang was also the company’s CEO from June 2007 to January 2009, until he was replaced by Carol Bartz. ”My time at Yahoo!, from its founding to the present, has encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life,” sai...

Yahoo on Wednesday announced that former PayPal president Scott Thompson will takeover as CEO of the company. Thompson will replace Tim Morse, who has served as the interim CEO since the firing of Carol Bartz last year. ” With the ultimate goal of delivering the value our shareholders expect, my immediate focus will be on getting to know the entire team and hearing more from all Yahoo!s, working closely with the engineers and product teams, and diving deeply into our products and services to learn more ...

In a recent interview on the Charlie Rose show, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Yahoo, Microsoft and Google are secretly collecting user data. Zuckerberg also argued that Facebook is more transparent than the aforementioned companies. “It’s just that they’re collecting that about you behind your back,” he said. “You’re going around the web and they’re collecting this huge amount of information about you and you never knew that.” Zuckerberg did admit that ...

Rumor has it Microsoft is again toying with the idea of purchasing Yahoo. The Redmond, Washington-based company may partner with another unnamed firm in an effort to make a bid, an anonymous Microsoft executive told Reuters on Wednesday. However, Reuters noted that other divisions inside Microsoft are still not sold on making an offer on the troubled search engine. AllThingsD said rumors about Microsoft’s interest are not true and that the company is not currently interested in acquiring Yahoo. Several ...

Following recent rumblings surrounding discontent atop Yahoo’s executive chain, the struggling Internet company fired its CEO Carol Bartz. In the same stroke, Yahoo! also revealed that it is for sale. News broke Tuesday night that former chief executive Carol Bartz sent an email to the entire Yahoo organization. In her brief note, she stated that Yahoo’s chairman of the board had fired her — over the phone, no less. Yahoo confirmed the news, stating that Chief Financial Officer Tim Morse would...

Bids for the online streaming company Hulu are due on Wednesday but it is still unclear what the company’s future will hold. Bidders will “submit proposals with wide price ranges based on what types of television shows Hulu would license, when those shows would become available on Hulu and how long the agreements would stretch,” The Wall Street Journal said in a report. Most recently, Hulu changed its licensing terms and now offers television shows eight days after they air, which could turn...

Apple is toying with the idea of placing a bid on the Hulu video streaming service, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. In June, Hulu announced that it had hired Morgan Stanley and Guggenheim Partners to assist with a the sale of the company and rumor had it that Yahoo! was interested in making a bid at that time. Should an acquisition happen, Apple might use Hulu to create a subscription screaming video offering in an effort to compete with services such as Netflix. Currently, customers can only purchase or rent...