• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, December 16, 2010

In the wake of Yahoo confirming its laying off about 4% of its workforce, or about 600 employees, this week, a report on Businesses Insider indicates the company is planning shutter or merge services including Delicious, Yahoo Buzz, Yahoo Events and others. The tip comes from a Twitter post by ex-Yahoo exec and Upcoming founder Andy Baio showing what looks like an internal Yahoo slide listing services the company's plans to “sunset,” “merge” or “make feature.”

The last category includes Yahoo Deals, Yahoo Widgets, Yahoo Alerts and several other smaller-scale services on the Web portal. In the internal memo leaked yesterday from Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz announcing the layoffs, which fell most heavily on the Products group, she reiterated the company was “cutting investment in underperforming and non-core products so we can focus on our strengths (like email, the homepage, search, mobile, advertising, content and more).”

So, it doesn’t come as a huge surprise Yahoo would be scrapping various properties that haven’t met expectations. Also, at least one service listed under “sunset,” MyBlogLog, was reported to be shut down a year ago. Earlier his week, Yahoo Video stopped accepting user-generated video and will delete all UGC material by next spring, underscoring its shift to professional video. No word yet from Yahoo on the latest report of services being scrapped.

Update: Yahoo issued the following statement this afternoon:

"Part of our organizational streamlining involves cutting our investment in underperforming or off-strategy products to put better focus on our core strengths and fund new innovation in the next year and beyond. We continuously evaluate and prioritize our portfolio of products and services, and do plan to shut down some products in the coming months such as Yahoo! Buzz, our Traffic APIs, and others. We will communicate specific plans when appropriate."