The U.S. internet group Yahoo! Thursday announced the freezing of salaries of its employees, reduce costs and revive the group who regularly loses ground to other major names in the internet, like Google, MySpace and Facebook.

The announcement comes five days before the publication of the company for the last quarter of 2008. “The management team decided that provide annual salary increases would not be in the interest of the group or its shareholders,” said a spokeswoman for Yahoo! Kim Rubey.

According to analysts, the new CEO Carol Bartz could make things happen. The former CEO of the American publisher of Autodesk software was appointed last week and has promised to revive the giant of the Internet.

Ms. Bartz, 60, replaces co-founder Jerry Yang of the group who had announced his departure on 18 November, but remained in place the time that he finds a successor. Mr. Yang had been one of rejection of the tender launched in 2008 by the software giant Microsoft on Yahoo.

His refusal to approve the offer of $ 33 per share Yahoo! launched by Microsoft had provoked the indignation of numbers of shareholders of the group, including billionaire Carl Icahn, who had led the revolt against the management team.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Thursday that content Yahoo! now headed by Carol Bartz, one of his acquaintances.

However, as the media technology are on the lookout for any possible resumption of talks between Yahoo! and Microsoft, Mr. Ballmer said he had “nothing to say on the subject yet.

Google dominates 63.6% of internet searches in the United States, far ahead of Yahoo! (20.5%) and Microsoft (8.5%), according to a study conducted in December by the firm ComsScore.