Yahoo Japan Corp., which operates Japan's top Internet search engine, said Wednesday it plans to hire 200 or more employees on an annual basis in an effort to implement its aggressive business expansion plan.
If the job expansion program is carried out in full, the Yahoo Japan group will have 1,000 employees in Japan by 2004, almost double the 520 reported by the firm at the end of June.
Yahoo Japan said July 19 that it posted group net profits of 2.18 billion yen in the first quarter of the 2002 business year, up 96.2 percent from the parent-only net profits it logged in the same period last year.
Yahoo Japan President Masahiro Inoue said his company plans to hire more people to fill the gap between "what we want to do and what we can do" with the current employment level.
Inoue said Yahoo Japan will be looking for people with experience related to the new line of online trade in which the company plans to invest.
Yahoo Japan is owned 50.5 percent by Softbank Corp. and 33.6 percent by Yahoo! Inc. of the United States.