Miguel Helft from the NYT reports the layoffs, announced in a blog post, are supposed to “reduce overlap between different groups and speed up decision making.”
The cuts suggest the global recession is affecting some parts of Google’s business more severely than the company anticipated back in January, when Google laid off 100 recruiters. At the time, Eric Schmidt, the company’s CEO, said deeper cuts were “unlikely,” but a month later another 40 positions were eliminated when Google shut down its radio advertising efforts.
At least not all is lost for the laid-off workers. They will be given time to apply for other jobs within the company.