Google Downsizes

16th January 2009

There is some bad news for the IT industry in general, and for Google employees in particular. It looks as though the recession is beginning to catch up with the search giant.

A few months ago, Google relocated some of their engineers from Phoenix-Arizona, to other places. Now another 70 employees from Austin-Texas, Trondheim in Norway and Lulea in Sweden are being asked to do the same. The reason behind this is to have fewer but better-coordinated engineering sites, which would help reduce overhead costs, while retaining the quality and efficiency of their services.

Another major step being taken by Google is to reduce the number of new recruits. Initially, they ended all the contracts they had with the outside sources that provided recruiting services to them. Now, however, they have gone a step further and decided to reduce the size of their recruiting department by as many as 100 people. The logic is, of course, that since they will be recruiting fewer people for quite some time, they will require less people to do so. However, the management is hopeful that most of these staff members will be reassigned to other appropriate jobs within the organisation itself.

While Google had laid off 300 employees of their subsidiary, DoubleClick, last year, the Times points out that this is the first time their own employees are being made redundant.

Google has also announced that they will discontinue some services that have not been doing too well or have been replaced by better apps. Amongst them are Jaiku, Dodgeball, Catalog Search, Google Notebook and uploads for Google Video.

Another indication of their cost cutting efforts is the fact that instead of the $1,000 bonus that employees get as a gift every year, this time they were just given a new T-Mobile G1 mobile phone.

Though these measures are relatively minor compared to the layoffs at Yahoo! and other tech companies in recent month, it is certainly bad news that the one company most experts thought would sail through the reecession unscathed is already trimming its workforce.

The worst is probably yet to come. Among other technology firms, Motorola has announced 4,000 job cuts, while there are unconfirmed rumors about the possibility of 15,000 layoffs at Microsoft.

Tags: google, jaiku, layoff, recession, t-mobile, video

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Google To Stop Print Ad Service | AccuraCast Search Daily News : 24 January 2009 at 12:36 am

[...] Following closely on the heels of announcements regarding staff reductions and the closure of some of their offices worldwide and services such as video uploads, Jaiku, dodgeball, notebook and catalog search, comes an announcement from Google that they will now be closing down their Print Ads service. [...]
Google Radio Ads Off The Airwaves | AccuraCast Search Daily News : 17 February 2009 at 8:06 pm

[...] Even though Google executives maintain that they are closing the audio ads service due to failed expectations, if one looks at all their other recent cut-backs – print ads, followed closely by the closure of Jaiku, Dodgeball and Notebook – it looks suspiciously like a move to try and keep up the profit margin and tide over the financial meltdown by sticking to what they know best – search. [...]
Speculation About Google Ending MySpace Relationship | AccuraCast Search Daily News : 21 February 2009 at 5:34 pm

[...] In fact, if one takes a closer look at some of Googleâ€™s recent financial decisions, it is quite obvious that the search giant is protecting its margins by making some not-so-subtle changes in their policy as regards distribution deals. They are being more prudent where spending money is concerned. [...]

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