Google cutting 200 sales and marketing jobs


27 Mar 2009

Google has announced that it will be cutting just under 200 jobs within its sales and marketing organisations globally in an attempt to streamline operations and to address the fact that it has over-invested in certain areas.

“Google has grown very quickly in a very short period of time,” said Omid Kordestani, senior VP, global sales and business development, in a statement posted on the company’s official blog.

“When companies grow that quickly, it’s almost impossible to get everything right — and we certainly didn’t.

“In some areas we’ve created overlapping organisations which not only duplicate effort but also complicate the decision-making process. That makes our teams less effective and efficient than they should be. In addition, we over-invested in some areas in preparation for the growth trends we were experiencing at the time.”

Kordestani said the company had looked at a number of different options, but ultimately decided that the organisation had to be restructured in order to improve its effectiveness and efficiency as a business.

Google employs nearly 21,000 people worldwide, of whom approximately 1,500 are based in Ireland. While it’s understood that around 100 of the company’s US-based staff will lose their jobs, Google has not yet said if the Irish operation will be affected by the cuts.

By Grainne Rothery