The International Herald Tribune website will soon become the new New York Times site. It seems the decision was merely branding, however, the Paris based IHT will likely be facing job cuts, according to both Forbes and MarketWatch.

General Manager, Vivian Schiller says the decision is “absolutely, positively not about cost savings.  Rather, it’s about growth.”

The memo announcing this merger/closing states:

“Regular NYTimes.com users will be able to opt-in to that new home page; the IHT.com URL will also redirect there. We will also feature six new global section fronts, again chosen for international readers: business, travel, culture, sports, style and opinion. Those will be found alongside the standard NYTimes.com section fronts and also featured on the global edition homepage. All IHT content will now be published on the integrated site as well as archived and searchable on NYTimes.com.”

Seems like a decent decision for both parties from a business standpoint.