Google makes first big job cuts

Google is known for being the one of the most employer-employee friendly companies going.

With tales of employees being provided with scooters for transport around the massive Googleplex and a staff restaurant with free food, it seems like a fairytale environment compared to the average office worker’s cubicle.

Well it turns out it’s not always scooters and free lunches working for Google because in the magical land of fairytale work environments, you can still get the sack.

That’s right. Google has gone and announced that the company will wave goodbye to 300 of it’s DoubleClick staff in the US, with more redundancies to hit overseas staff in the next few months.

The 300 man axe means a 25 percent reduction in DoubleClick manpower, making these cuts Google’s first big staff cutback. While some people have already been let go, the company plans on keeping a number of them on a contractual basis and offering some people transitional positions which are likely to end once the two companies are fully integrated.

Google bought DoubleClick for $3 billion last year but the acquisition was only wrapped up last month.

On the 11th of March Chief Exec of Google, Eric Schmidt posted a blog on the company’s site warning employees of the cuts and saying that there were more job losses to come for DoubleClick staff overseas.

Double click employees 1200 people in the US and 300 hundred elsewhere in the world.

Read the full story on the BBCOnline.