Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
A large number of subcontracted employees and full time employees are being laid off at multiple Google locations in the US, according to a report.
Citing sources inside Google, WebGuild Silicon Valley, a forum for IT professionals, webmasters, corporate internet marketers,
content managers, web project managers, CIOs, and the like, claims deep staff cuts are underway at the search giant.
Affected locations are said to include Google locations in Washington state, Michigan and Texas. In some cases, entire offices are reportedly being closed.
WebGuild reports claims that the retrenchments are being organised in such a way that they are not subject to state or federal reporting requirements.
Google began shedding staff in the (northern) spring of 2008, following the DoubleClick acquisition.
Another 100 jobs in Google's recruitment operation went in November 2008 as the Global Financial Crisis began to bite. If a company isn't hiring as many staff, it doesn't need as many HR people.
Last January, WebGuild claimed that as many as 6000 people had been let go by Google in the previous months, and that up to 10,000 could be facing redundancy. While a Google spokesperson described WebGuild's estimate as 'incorrect', she did not provide the correct numbers.
February saw another round of cuts, this time in positions involved in the company's broadcast radio advertising services.
At the time, iTWire noted that "the story seems to be the stealthy layoff of large numbers of contractors, plus a death by a thousand cuts for the permanent workforce."
A Google Australia spokesperson was invited to comment on the latest reports of layoffs and any implications for the company's Australian operation, but had not replied by the time of publication. This article will be updated with any response from the company.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
How to Make Business Discovery Work for Your Business
Business Discovery takes its cues from consumer apps. Like Google, it encourages us- ers to hunt for and explore data without worrying about or even noticing the underly- ing technology. Their entire experience is working within an intuitive interface to get real-time, self-service results with only minimal training. ...more
Try an easy-to-use set of web-enabled
tools for business-class productivity services. Office 365 provides
anywhere-access to email, important documents, contacts, and calendars
on almost any device.