Looking around the UK media market its pretty clear that we are in for a tough time over the next 18 months whilst the economy picks itself up from the battering its taken over the last 6 months. It however seems that even giants like Google are performing cost cutting exercise in order to maintain previous profit levels. In three separate announcements Google have confirmed they are going to make a number of posts redundant in their human resources departments and to centralise technology offices in another drive to cut costs. Below are a couple of snippets from the Google announcements here and here
Our first step to address this was to wind down almost all our contracts with external contractors and vendors providing recruiting services for Google. However, after much consideration, we have with great regret decided that we need to go further and reduce the overall size of our recruiting organization by approximately 100 positions.
However, we do recognize the upheaval and heartache that these changes may have on Google families, and that we may not be able to keep 100% of these exceptional employees.
A post on Mashable also confirms that Google are going to shut the consumer facing side of Twitter rival Jaiku and wrap it into its Google application services. The article also casts doubt on Google Reader, which in my opinion is one of the best Google products out there.
Seems then from the above announcements that all companies, even giants like Google are going to face downturns over the coming year. Lets just hope for everyone that’s connected to media its not going to hit too hard.
