Google has announced it’s trimming staff numbers as the recession begins to have an impact. The search giant is closing some of its smaller offices, laying off recruitment workers and shutting down work on its non-core products.
Announcing the moves, Google explained it had wound down almost all contracts with external recruiting contractors, and would cut its internal recruitment department by “approximately 100 positions.”
Google will also be closing its smaller engineering departments in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden. It will result in around 70 developers being asked to relocate, and while Google’s not asking for redundancies, it’s unlikely all staff will choose to make the move, and may leave the company instead.
Lastly, Google says it’s ceasing development on several non-core applications.
Jaiku, its Twitter-esque microblogging platform will be released as an open source project, but Google will not develop it any further. Google Mashup Editor will also cease to be, as the Big G replaces it with its App Engine.
Likewise Dodgeball, Google’s location-sharing app, will be discontinued entirely, as will Catalogue Search, which has now been superseded by Google Book Search.
Google Video will also have its upload functions disabled in the next few months, as it has almost completely been outdated by the now Google-owned YouTube, although users will still be able to search its contents.
Similarly, Google Notebook will be closed to new users, but stay working for anyone currently signed up. The company has suggested Google Docs, Gmail Tasks and Google Bookmarks as replacement services.
Now | £TBC | Google
