In an effort to refocus the web portals struggling business, Yahoo! Inc. plans to cut hundreds of jobs in 2008. The layoffs would signify the most aggressive step so far by Yahoo!s new chief executive, Jerry Yang, to reignite the companys fortunes since Yang took over in 2007. Yang has been strongly pressured by Wall Street investors to strengthen underperforming units, in an attempt to increase Yahoo! Profits and its stagnant shares. There are anticipated to be approximately 500 job cuts out of 14,000 Yahoo! employees globally, yet the exact locations of the job cuts have not yet been decided with certainty. Yahoo! refused to comment directly about the imminent layoffs, as the company is facing slowing growth under the attack of Internet giant Google Inc. Even Yahoo!s executives admit that the company had become overly bureaucratic and failed to continue to innovate fast enough against various up-and-coming companies, such as social networking giants MySpace and Facebook, which have captured the attention of numerous people on the Internet. After Yang took over in 2007, Yahoo! has been transitioning to address its shortcomings even though it continues to be a very popular website and a profitable company. Company executives are counting on a turnaround by making Yahoo! the starting point for the majority of Internet users, establishing Yahoo! as a key player in the online advertising world that brokers ads for its own site as well as other sites, and opening the Yahoo! website to outside developers. The concept is to invest in Yahoo!s search engine, e-mail, photos, finance, and recent acquisitions in online advertising, BlueLithium and Right Media. Yahoo!s quandary is similar to its problems in 2001, when the dot-com bubble forced a series of layoffs, so the company now hopes that it can make a similar comeback.