Yahoo! Inc., owner of the largest U.S. Web portal, is cutting about 1 percent of its global workforce, part of a turnaround initiative that included the elimination of about 4 percent of jobs in December.

Yahoo, which had about 14,000 employees at the end of the third quarter, will continue to hire for “key priorities,” the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company said today in an e-mailed statement.

Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz, who also made an earlier round of job cuts in 2009, is grappling with competition from Facebook Inc. and Google Inc. Facebook passed Yahoo as the top seller of online display advertisements in the U.S. more than a year ago, based on the number of times an ad is viewed, according to ComScore Inc., a Reston, Virginia-based researcher.

“The personnel changes we are making are part of our ongoing strategy to best position Yahoo! for revenue growth and margin expansion and to support our strategy to deliver differentiated products and experiences to the marketplace,” the company said in today’s statement.

Yahoo fell 23 cents to $15.86 at 2:26 p.m. New York time on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The shares were little changed last year.

The company is scheduled to announce its fourth-quarter earnings results today after the close of U.S. trading.