The New York Times is reporting that Yahoo is set to announce hundreds of employees will be laid off.

And so it begins. Where is this economy going to take us in the next year?

The story reports that Yahoo is looking to refocus it’s efforts in certain crucial areas and cut workforce in others. It goes on to say:

In an e-mail statement, a company spokeswoman, Diana Wong, said: “Yahoo plans to invest in some areas, reduce emphasis in others, and eliminate some areas of the business that don’t support the company’s priorities. Yahoo continues to attract and hire talent against the company’s key initiatives to create long-term stockholder value.”

This is probably a good move for Yahoo. The company has been faltering for awhile now, working in Google’s shadow but never able to catch up. The company has over 500 million users - an impressive number by any standards. Yahoo continues to be HUGE. However, they can’t quite seem to monetize their efforts as well as Google does.

My view is that Yahoo can reemerge as a major starting point in the daily travels of people online. Their approach to content is distinctly different from Google. Yahoo does a lot of things NOT search related. And those things Yahoo does do are usually executed pretty well. They’ve got the skills and they have good ideas. They just need to trim some fat and really buckle down to monetize what they are doing.

GigaOM agrees, openly hoping that Yahoo will put up a real fight.