Alas, today is "major pink slip handout" day over at Yahoo, where "police and security teams have been scheduled to provide order in case anyone goes postal." But things are getting ugly overseas as well. According to Valleywag, "the entire Dublin Finance team was laid off, to be outsourced by some place in Romania. Europe learns who gets axed [today] -- let's hope Rich Riley is among them, but unlikely as he is another......

So, you didn't like Microsoft, did you? Well, how about News Corp.? In an attempt to rejuvenate Yahoo and fend off Microsoft's advances, Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate is reportedly in talks to purchase Yahoo. Although claiming that his company is "not interested in buying Yahoo," the Merc reports: The Wall Street Journal, which is owned by News Corp., reported Wednesday that its parent company is considering taking a stake in Yahoo that could exceed......

According to a Valleywag tipster: FYI - I've heard the word from my peeps over at Yahoo Search Marketing in Burbank CA that the layoffs are going down as we speak, and people are being let go today. They're apparently walking the people into a meeting room, and then walking them out of the building. And according to an SFist tipster: [Layoffs will] occur over the next few days as employees are sent packing.......

It looks like Sunnyvale-based Yahoo plans on rejecting the $44.6 billion rose Microsoft offered it earlier this month. A move that would have merged the two tech giants won't happen, it seems, and we were so sure this relationship would've worked out swimmingly. Sniff. But all is not lost. According the Gate: Yahoo's board, which met Friday, has determined that the $31 per share offer Microsoft made is inadequate. The Wall Street Journal reported......

In an attempt to slow Google's fierce roll, Microsoft made an unsolicited bid to purchase Yahoo Inc. for a cool $44.6 billion today. Gulp. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says that his company has "great respect for Yahoo, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market." Although Yahoo would like to remain independent, recent layoffs and......

Weep no more, my lady. After handing over an apology to the sobbing mother of a Chinese journalist that they helped imprison, Yahoo now must hand over an undisclosed amount to the scribes. Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao, the latter a former journalist at Contemporary Business News, will receive a hefty, unknown amount from Yahoo, Inc. The Chinese journalists sued Yahoo, blaming them for their imprisonment and torture by Chinese government officials. "According to......

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos threw down some serious shade today. "While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies," he cried, shaming two senior Yahoo officials. Why? Because the Sunnyvale company named names, handing over private information about Chinese journalist Shi Tao's online pro-democracy action to country officials. (Or, as the New York Times so eloquently put it, their "complicity with an oppressive communist regime." Oh snap.) This landed......