Yahoo is to cut 2,000 staff, 14% of the workforce¹, the company has confirmed.

雅虎公司证实，将裁员2000人，占员工总数的14%。

The California-based company said the cuts were part of efforts to make it "smaller, nimbler, more profitable".

The web portal has 700 million users, but has failed to keep up with rival Google in the search engine business, while its popular webmail service has been overtaken by social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

Yahoo expects its cost-cutting programme to save $375m (£236m) a year.

However, severance² pay（解雇费） is expected to cost the company a one-off $125m-145m. The affected³ employees will be notified later on Wednesday.

Shrinking revenues

It is the struggling company's sixth round of redundancies in the last four years, with the latest announcement bringing the total to almost 6,000 jobs losses.

This is the biggest round yet - beating the 1,500 laid off in late 2008 in response to the recession.

Yahoo has also changed its chief executive twice over in the same period, but has as yet failed to turn around its fortunes.

The company made a profit of $1bn last year, down from $1.2bn in 2010. More worryingly, revenues fell to $5bn from $6.3bn, at a time when rivals have seen rapid growth.

"You can't cut your way to revenue growth," said analyst⁴ Colin Gillis of brokerage BGC Partners. "What people want to see out of Yahoo is they want to see a plan and provision（规定，条款） for revenue growth."

The firm said it would reveal more details of its new stategy when it releases its next set of results on 17 April.