Yahoo Announce First Profit in Over a Year

On Tuesday, Yahoo released details of its best quarterly performance for some time. Over the last year the search engine company have seen a constant string of quarterly losses that have been a small part of a larger scale problem.

Last year Yahoo hired Carol A. Bartz as chief executive in the hope of turning their fortunes around. This followed the unsuccessful tenures of Terry Semel and Jerry Yang as the company set about a gradual slide in revenue. However the last quarter of last year marked a slight upturn and while it could be a blip; it could also be put down to several different factors.

Yahoo has undergone a multitude of changes since the arrival of Bartz as she sought to recreate Yahoo’s image. A redesign of the front page and closer connections to social networking sites and internet services has contributed to the redesign. Furthermore, Yahoo has prepared a $100 million marketing campaign to be conducted throughout the year ahead.

Another, slightly surprising method of reducing expenses is the hiring of Microsoft to power its search engine and advertising. In this case Yahoo would keep the vast majority of the revenue generated with Microsoft bearing much of the costs. It seems a somewhat unlikely coupling, with Microsoft owning Yahoo’s closest rival in the search engine market, ‘Bing’.

With a lot of change in the works it is still up for question if Yahoo can turn around this slide. Despite the profit for this quarter, it coincides with a drop in revenue of 4% marking a decline in revenue for the last 5 quarters as shown in Yahoo’s financial breakdown. Yahoo maintains that this is still the start of a turn-around for them and that this year will show that. With a $100 million marketing campaign and a new partner in Microsoft there is potential for change but it remains to be seen.

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