In a bid to cut costs and ensure adequate growth rate, internet giant, Yahoo Inc. has decided to freeze salary hikes of its employees for the financial year 2009.

The company, visibly upset over low revenue and falling profit, would also employ some other cost cutting measures to keep costs in line with revenues and to mitigate the impact of global slowdown on its business.

San Francisco  - Yahoo is to name Carol Bartz, the former chief executive of software company Autodesk, as its new CEO, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The report comes after a two-month search for a replacement for company founder Jerry Yang, who was widely blamed for botching merger talks with Microsoft that would have proved highly lucrative to many shareholders.

On Wednesday, search engine Yahoo! Inc informed that it will cut to three months the time it stores personal data gathered from web surfing, making its retention policy the shortest among peers.

The computer addresses of the users would be anonymized by the company within three months in most cases, from a prior standard of 13 months. There is a chance that fraud or system security is involved, so the company is reserving the right to keep data for up to six months.

Yahoo, which is constantly making efforts to control the mobile search market, is being responded by positive responses. A recent announcement made by T-Mobile reveals that they have selected Yahoo to power its latest web2go portal. The new portal will have T-Mobile subscribers who use the Internet, use the Yahoo-powered service by default. 

With Yang out, Microsoft may come back

On Monday many sources reveled that the resignation of Jerry Yang as chief executive of Yahoo might invite another offer from Microsoft.

Eric Jackson, an activist Yahoo shareholder who was among the investors angry with Yahoo's management for not accepting Microsoft's previous bid, reported, "I would expect Microsoft to come back within the next three or four months. I think Microsoft will come back because Microsoft needs Yahoo, despite what they've been saying publicly, and I think they know that."

London, Nov 18: Jerry Yang, the co-founder of Yahoo, will step down from his role after the company finds a replacement, the Internet company has announced.

Yang’s departure follows long criticism of his company’s stewardship, which has seen its share price collapse to about 10 dollars.

Early this year, the man fought off a hostile takeover bid from Microsoft which offered 33 dollars a share.

Yang told the workforce that he would be participating in the search for his successor.