Is this the end for Yahoo?

TECH behemoth Yahoo has all but conceded defeat. The company is sacking 1700 employees and appears to be putting out the “for sale” sign.

(FILES) This file photo taken on January 07, 2014 shows Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer speaking during her keynote address at the 2014 International CES in Las Vegas, Nevada. Yahoo on February 2, 2016 said it is cutting 15 percent of its workforce and narrowing its focus as it explores "strategic alternatives" for what to do with the faded Internet star. The announcements came as the California company reported a loss of $4.43 billion in the final three months of last year, due mostly to lowering the value of its US, Canada, Europe, Latin America and Tumblr units. / AFP / ROBYN BECK

YAHOO is laying off about 1,700 employees and shedding some of its excess baggage in a shake-up likely to determine whether CEO Marissa Mayer can save her own job.

The long-anticipated purge, announced on Tuesday, will jettison about 15 per cent of Yahoo’s workforce along with an assortment of services that Mayer decided aren’t worth the time and money that the internet company has been putting into them.

Mayer hopes to sell some of Yahoo’s unwanted services for about $US1 billion ($A1.42 billion), though she didn’t identify which ones.

In an apparent concession to some shareholders, Mayer also said Yahoo’s board will mull “strategic alternatives” that could result in the sale of all the company’s internet operations.

Analysts have speculated that Verizon, AT&T and Comcast might be interested in buying Yahoo’s main business, despite years of deterioration.

“The Board also believes that exploring additional strategic alternatives, in parallel to the execution of the management plan, is in the best interest of our shareholders,” the company said in a press release.

“Separating our Alibaba stake from our operating business continues to be a primary focus, and our most direct path to value maximisation. In addition to continuing work on the reverse spin, which we’ve discussed previously, we will engage on qualified strategic proposals.”

The company reported a loss of $US4.43 billion in the final three months of last year.

Mayer expressed confidence that her plan to run Yahoo as a smaller, more focused company “will dramatically brighten our future and improve our competitiveness, and attractiveness to users, advertisers, and partners.”

This cost-cutting overhaul might be Mayer’s last chance to persuade restless shareholders that she has figured out how to revive the internet company’s growth after three-and-half years of futility.

Some of Yahoo’s most outspoken shareholders, such as SpringOwl Asset Management, already have concluded that Mayer should be laid off, too. Mayer, a former rising star at Google who helped Google eclipse Yahoo, has given no indication she intends to leave.

Even after the mass firings are completed by the end of March, Yahoo will still have about 9,000 workers — three times the roughly 3,000 people that SpringOwl believes the company should be employing, based on its steadily declining revenue.

“We would like to see a higher stock price, and we think Marissa and her current management team have become a hindrance to that,” said Eric Jackson, SpringOwl’s managing director.

He declined to disclose the size of SpringOwl’s Yahoo investment.

Yahoo’s stock dipped 25 US cents to $US28.81 in extended trading after details of Mayer’s latest turnaround attempt came out.

Originally published as Is this the end for Yahoo?