Sigaloff referred a request for comment back to Yahoo’s spokesman.

Yahoo was once best known for its search engine but has outsourced the technology behind it since 2009.

US telecommunications firm Verizon bought Yahoo in 2016 for $US4.8 billion ($6.9 billion) after purchasing another internet giant of yesteryear, AOL, in 2015 for $US4.4 billion, in a move the phone company hoped could make it an advertising giant. But Verizon sold a 90 per cent interest in both to private equity firm Apollo Global Management in 2021 for a combined $US5 billion.

Many of Yahoo’s Australian staff are in its media business, which include news, finance and sport pages that produce a large volume of free content. The editorial side of those divisions was not affected by the recent cuts, which were announced internally last week.

Last week, the global media giant News Corp, which publishes The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun and Australian, told the market that its earnings had fallen between 20 per cent and 30 per cent across its business and it would cut its workforce by 5 per cent, or about 1250 jobs.