On Thursday, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) publicly announced their plans to leave South Korea by the end of 2012.
The company made the following statement in regards to their decision, “”Since 1997, our team in Korea has provided high-quality editorial content and services, and has built a successful search advertising network. We’re proud of the work they’ve done. But despite the hard work of the team, the Korean operation has faced growing challenges over the past few years that now make scaling our business very difficult.”
Although the search engine giant didn’t divulge details behind their decision, they did mention that it was a move to streamline their operations and build a better future for the company. This is just one major change that’s taking place at Yahoo. As the company’s newly appointed chief executive officer, Marissa Mayer is taking the liberty to improve the company and this is just one of those changes.
Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) doesn’t have any plans to drop their service in other Asian countries. The search engine giant has been struggling for awhile to survive in a market with top competitors like Daum and Naver. This move is most likely a major part of Yahoo’s plan to move their focus from Asia to the United States.
In early 2012, the company sold nearly half of their stakes in Alibaba’s Group from China. They garnered about $3.65 million for that sale.
Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO)’s changing focus proves that the company is ready to make some serious improvements to stay in the game. Although the company isn’t doing to shabby in terms of finances (they garner over 700 million visits a month), it still doesn’t have the dominance in the market that Google or Facebook has.
I predict that we will hear more Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) and their upcoming changes in the next few months.
