Yahoo announced that it was eliminating 2,000 jobs this morning–more than 14 percent of the company’s 14,000 employees.

“Today’s actions are an important next step toward a bold, new Yahoo! — smaller, nimbler, more profitable and better equipped to innovate as fast as our customers and our industry require,” Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson said in a statement. “Unfortunately, reaching that goal requires the tough decision to eliminate positions.”

AllThingsD, which broke news of the cuts last night, says the carnage most likely isn’t over. According to the site’s Kara Swisher, this brutal round of cuts “is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg that will hit the storied Silicon Valley Internet giant in the months to come.” Swisher says the axe will come down hardest on Yahoo’s ad tech and search businesses, while the company may look to expand in other regions in the near future.

Given the company’s very public emphasis on content creation over the past few months, it sure looks like Yahoo is abandoning its Silicon Valley origins and going Hollywood. The site can’t compete with Google in terms of innovation, but it still has a massive user base. They’re obviously doubling down on the hope they can land premium ad bucks if they can get people watching some decent original programming,

New Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson is in the midst of implementing massive changes to the Internet giant. He’s brought in a consulting group to help guide him through the effort. You don’t have to watch House of Lies to know what that means: layoffs. AllThingsD reports the carnage could number in the thousands, although no major job cuts have been announced yet. Yahoo Labs head Prabhavar Raghavan, however, recently jumped ship to Google in anticipation of massive cuts, sources are telling AllThingsD.

So where is the money saved from axing research engineers going to go? According to Toronto’s The Globe and Mail, Yahoo may be on the verge of securing Canadian broadcast rights to the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games.

Broadcast rights to the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia and the 2016 Summer Games in Brazil are up for grabs after the International Olympic Committee rejected two “lowball” bids by a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. and BCE Inc. partnership. Their most recent bid was quietly rejected in late February, The Globe and Mail has learned. That has opened the door for Yahoo, which is now weighing using the Canadian broadcast rights as an opportunity to enhance its reputation as a content producer and revitalize its fortunes after losing ground to rivals such as Google Inc.

The Olympics, huh? Is Dick Ebersol consulting for Yahoo these days?

H/T Mediawire

Silicon Valley giant Yahoo! Inc. announced today that Jerry Yang has tendered his resignation, 17 years after co-founding the company. Stock prices of the beleaguered company rose slightly following the announcement.

Yahoo has seen a decline in revenue in recent years, and has been struggling to compete with other online companies for advertising dollars. Yang gained some notoriety among shareholders in 2008 when, while he was serving as CEO, the company rejected a multi-billion dollar deal to sell to Microsoft. Yang stepped down as CEO within months, but remained on the board.

Yang said in a statement:

My time at Yahoo!, from its founding to the present, has encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life. However, the time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo!

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