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NEWS > BUSINESS > EMPLOYEES DON’T EVEN NOTICE AS YAHOO SHUTS DOWN FOR A WEEK
EMPLOYEES DON’T EVEN NOTICE AS YAHOO SHUTS DOWN FOR A WEEK
December 26 2009
Sunnyvale, CA – There was time when Google was a start up, when MySpace and Facebook weren’t even glints in their creator’s eyes, and Twitter wasn’t even a word. At that time there was one company that dominated the web, wresting more control 
over the medium than anyone has had since, that company was named Yahoo! Founded in 1995 by engineering students Jerry Yang and David Filo, Yahoo! helped to create the web as we know it today, giving the nascent medium its first heavy hitter.
Of course that was many years ago and the web has changed dramatically since those early days. The rise of other dominant forces as well as a series of poor decisions – including an opportunity to purchase a young Google—by the company’s leadership has pushed the company to brink of irrelevancy. With stock prices plummeting, the founders looking in from the outside, and user interest at an all time low the future of the company has been bleak for many years and apparently has little signs of life going forward. That dire outlook on the once powerful company has many in Silicon Valley on a death watch, waiting to
pick over the corpse of the company. Now the company has made a controversial decision to push its employees to take Christmas week off, most of whom apparently barely noticed the change.
“This is nothing new, just formalized a little more. It’s fairly standard in the industry, closing down during a traditionally slow week and giving employees time to recharge. A lot of employees tend to take that week off anyway,” said spokesperson Dana Lengkeek. “In addition we will be turning lights and computers off in all its facilities, though the company would not disclose how much it expects to save. Consumers will not see any difference on the website, which will continue to feature news. “
While such shutdowns are common throughout the industry particularly during Christmas week, the majority of other employees actually miss their daily grind unlike those at Yahoo!
“From everyone I’ve talked there’s a kind of indifference about the whole thing. Most of them are able to use their vacation days so the pay isn’t really an issue but the actual day-to-day of being at their desks, doing work, the majority of them aren’t really seeing a change except that they can sit around in the pyjamas,” said Scrape TV Technology analyst Ken Kevins. “I mean most of them use Google and Facebook anyway even at work so the change is really nominal for the majority of employees. Lights on or off just about everyone is seeing no change in the way the company does business.”
Yahoo! recently fell to third in the search race behind Microsoft’s Bing, though both trail Google by significant margins. Yahoo also operates a successful news and entertainment portal whose popularity is as baffling to employees as it is to everyone else.
“You look at their ranking amongst every major tracking outlet and they still rank in the top five of all websites throughout the world but I’ll be damned if I’ve actually met anyone who admits to visiting their sites, even the employees. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them asking people to take even more time off,” continued Kevins. “Eventually the pay cheques will run out and I’m sure employees will begin noticing that but the actual effort of going into work and the like, well that’s unlikely to change at least according to people I’ve spoken to.”
According to tests Yahoo’s websites are about the same as they were before the vacation.
William Ashford, Business Correspondent
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