Yahoo! layoffs begin

Yahoo! began issuing pink slips Wednesday to the majority of the employees affected by its previously announced 10 per cent job cut, the company confirmed.

Most of the 1,520 layoffs affect employees at Yahoo!'s US-based locations and come from a number of areas within the company, the company said.

A Yahoo! spokesman said: "There was an across-the-board review [for potential cuts] and no one area received a pass," he noted Yahoo! engaged in a strategic review of where it would make most sense to cut the positions.

The spokesman, however, declined to elaborate which areas of Yahoo!'s business took the greatest hits with the layoffs.

Yahoo! is continuing to evaluate which of its operations are no longer a priority and can be shut down and which of its businesses should be placed in a maintenance mode with no further investments, he said.

Those decisions are anticipated to come in the following weeks and months, he added.

This latest round of layoffs is part of Yahoo!'s previously announced plan to reduce its annualised expenses by $400m by the end of the year, which the company outlined in its third-quarter earnings announcement in October.

Yahoo!, which has annualised expenses of $3.9bn before the cuts, also plans to achieve its $400m goal by consolidating facilities and moving some of its business to areas where it costs less to operate, as well as shutting down parts of its business and putting others in a maintenance-only mode.

For Yahoo!, this marks the second time this year it's initiated layoffs. In February, the company cut 1,000 jobs after its fourth-quarter profit took a hit.

CNET News' Stephen Shankland contributed to this report.

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