Yahoo closes newsroom in Brazil and stops updating website – 03/31/2023 – Market

Yahoo ended this Friday (31) its news site in Brazil. The newsroom in the country was closed and around 20 journalists were laid off.

The site had news on politics, economics, sports, celebrities and other topics. I also produced video materials and branded content.

“By a global decision by the Yahoo group, Yahoo Brasil will close its activities”, wrote Alessandra Blanco, who was director of the company in the country, in a social network. “I am very grateful to the incredible team at Yahoo Brasil, brave and creative until the end.”

The closure was communicated to Brazilian employees in early February. The site’s newsroom was located on Avenida Brigadeiro Faria Lima, in São Paulo.

The report found that there were 80 layoffs in Yahoo’s operation in the country. The cuts affect, in addition to the editorial area, business, technology and advertising professionals.

Created in 1994 in the United States, Yahoo was one of the first technology giants that earned millions of dollars with services provided on the internet. The site started as a directory of online pages and later became a reference in searches, before Google dominated the service.

Even in the early years, the company invested in the creation of a news portal and sought to bet on several fronts, such as an email provider, photo storage and the sale of targeted online ads, distributed using user behavior data.

The American company has changed ownership twice in recent years. In 2016, Verizon bought it for $4.8 billion. Three years later, in 2019, the investment fund Apollo Global Management bought 90% of Yahoo’s shares and took control.

In early 2023, the company announced it would cut 20% of its global workforce, which would represent around 1,600 people.

In February, CEO Jim Lanzone told the website Axios that the cuts came in the wake of a change in the digital advertising sector, which has slowed down in the pace of growth. According to Axios, Yahoo profited US$ 8 billion in 2022, considering all its areas.

The technology sector is trying to readjust spending to the current economic scenario, after strong growth during the Covid pandemic. In March, Meta announced the cut of 10,000 employees, just four months after announcing the dismissal of another 11,000. Amazon, Microsoft and Google also laid off more than 10,000 employees this year.

With the end of the news site, the yahoo.com.br address started to display a search bar in the center, and a notice that the publication of contents was ended. The email service is still operational.

A Sheet contacted Yahoo Brasil, but did not hear back until the publication of this report.