Yang to Soon To Be Ex-Yahoos: You'll Be Home for the Holidays

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang reluctantly acknowledged Tuesday that Yahoo will be laying off 10 percent of its staff due to low earnings and the state of the economy, and today BoomTown's Kara Swisher has an interview with Yang about the state of the company. Despite low earnings this quarter and the increasingly depressing economic forecasts, Yang is confident that ad dollars going into display will keep being spent with Yahoo this year. Also, he's decided to fire everyone who's leaving Yahoo before Christmas:

We want to do it before the holidays, which is why we wanted to let people know that it would affect 10 percent [of Yahoo's work force].
But we also want to make sure that we are cutting to be more effective and not cutting for cutting’s sake.

Furthermore, Yahoo may be divesting itself from a large part of its current portfolio:

In the long term, we will look at our whole portfolio and are now asking ourselves in each case if we need to be in this business.

We’re asking ourselves–should we sell it or should we shut it down? That is the kind of comprehensive look we are doing across the company.

With many analysts hoping that Yahoo would make even deeper cuts (up to and including getting rid of Yang himself), it is increasingly looking like Yahoo is not capable of making those tough decisions. And if they don't cut into their failing businesses deeply enough, they'll have to worry about shutting down a lot more than a few struggling areas.