Google Inc is jettisoning nearly 200 workers in its largest round of layoffs yet, demonstrating that even highly profitable companies are feeling the recession’s pinch.
The job cuts announced on Thursday affected less than 1 percent of the 20,200 workers employed by the Internet search leader.
That’s modest compared with the massive shake-ups in the newspaper, retailing, automobile and financial services industries during the past year.
PHOTO: AP
Google’s housecleaning nevertheless is a sobering sign of the hard times around the globe.
Coming off a year in which it earned US$4.2 billion on revenue of US$22 billion, Google is still trimming its expenses in an attempt to protect its profit margins and prevent its slumping stock price from falling even further.
Google’s fortunes are tied to ad spending that is dwindling as both marketers and consumers squirrel away more cash. Although Google’s revenue has continued to rise during the 15-month-old recession, some analysts say they believe the Mountain View-based company may finally be suffering its first quarter-to-quarter decline since it went public in 2004.
It’s a guessing game because Google steadfastly refuses to offer financial guidance. But Google’s recent actions have left little doubt that management is bracing for a possible downturn.
Once renowned for its free-spending ways, Google already has curtailed some employee perquisites, dumped outside contractors and closed services that aren’t paying off. Pulling the plug on a radio advertising division in last month eliminated as many as 40 jobs.
Management has also clamped down on hiring after adding more than 17,000 workers in Google’s first 4 years as a public company. That decision prompted Google to dump 100 employee recruiters in January.
The latest layoffs are concentrated in the division that sells Google’s advertising.
In a blog posting, Google said it had hired too many employees doing the same jobs during its rapid expansion.
“Making changes of this kind is never easy — and we recognize that the recession makes the timing even more difficult for the Googlers concerned,” wrote Omid Kordestani, the company’s senior vice president of global sales and business development.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
COORDINATION, ASSURANCE: Separately, representatives reintroduced a bill that asks the state department to review guidelines on how the US engages with Taiwan US senators on Tuesday introduced the Taiwan travel and tourism coordination act, which they said would bolster bilateral travel and cooperation. The bill, proposed by US senators Marsha Blackburn and Brian Schatz, seeks to establish “robust security screenings for those traveling to the US from Asia, open new markets for American industry, and strengthen the economic partnership between the US and Taiwan,” they said in a statement. “Travel and tourism play a crucial role in a nation’s economic security,” but Taiwan faces “pressure and coercion from the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]” in this sector, the statement said. As Taiwan is a “vital trading
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