Too Fast, Too Furious, 200 Googlers Gone

Looks like nearly 200 Google employees will be doing their next search on the unemployment line after the company laid off the workers on Thursday. "Google has grown very quickly in a very short period of time," wrote Omid Kordestani, senior vice president, Global Sales and Business Development, in the company's official blog. "When companies grow that quickly it's almost impossible to get everything right -- and we certainly didn't." The Mountain, View, Calif.-based company said the growth spurt resulted in creating overlapping organizations that duplicated its efforts. "That makes our teams less effective and efficient than they should be," wrote Omid Kordestani, senior vice president, Global Sales and Business Development. "In addition, we over-invested in some areas in preparation for the growth trends we were experiencing at the time." The cuts are worldwide and are in Google's sales and marketing groups. Google also said that it had looked into other options but decided that it had no choice but to restructure the business. Google is not without heart though, and some employees may actually get a chance to stay at the company. "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 Kordestani. "We will give each person time to try and find another position at Google as well as outplacement support, and provide severance packages for those who leave the company." This round of job cuts comes after Google laid off 100 full-time recruiters and shuttered three engineering offices in January. Prior to that, the company slashed some contract workers. The company has 20,222 global employees.