SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo's turnaround attempt is going to be messy.
In his first three months on the job, CEO Scott Thompson has imposed the largest layoffs in the company's 17-year history, reshaped the board of directors, picked a potentially disruptive fight with a major shareholder and sued Facebook for patent infringement.
He says there's even more upheaval to come.
Thompson delivered a painful jolt Wednesday with a payroll purge of about 2,000 workers, or about 14 percent of Yahoo's 14,100 employees. The cuts will save about $375 million annually as Yahoo tries to boost its earnings and long-slumping stock price.
More shakeups loom as Thompson reshuffles divisions and considers selling an online ad-placement service and other operations that don't fit into his strategy.
Those potential changes will follow a tumultuous time for Thompson, an affable and well-respected executive who held the top job at eBay Inc.'s thriving PayPal service before being lured away to help salvage Yahoo.
Thompson "definitely seems to be taking a very broad and bold view of what needs to be done at Yahoo," said Standard & Poor's Capital IQ analyst Scott Kessler. "He seems to know it isn't going to be easy and it isn't going to be pleasant."
The specifics of Thompson's vision are still unclear. In comments to analysts and reporters, he has talked generally about doing a better job of analyzing the data that Yahoo collects about its 700 million monthly visitors. That would help the company sell ads and develop mobile services to connect with the growing number of people surfing the Web on smartphones and tablet computers.