Google New Zealand Layoffs
It looks like even the search colossus Google isn’t immune to the impact of the global recession.
Despite earning a staggering $4.2 billion on revenue of $21.8 billion last year Google is now aggressively trimming expenses to protect profits & stop its stock price from falling further.
Since January Google has eliminated outside contractors; curtailed some of the employee perks they’re famous for; & canned services that weren’t paying off, like their foray into radio advertising.
Google’s huge growth in revenues has fueled significant growth in the last couple of years with headcount jumping to almost 21,000 employees, compared to 10,674 at the end of 2006. But now to further reduce costs Google has started laying off staff & consolidating some offices.
Google’s announcement last week that it’s laying off 200 sales & marketing staff globally came as a surprise, given this is the part of the business responsible for generating advertising sales which reportedly account for 97% of Google’s revenue.
Disappointing is the fact that this decision has impacted on the Australian & New Zealand operations. Apparently the Melbourne office is being closed & the New Zealand office staff of 8 cut back significantly.
The Google NZ team is a great group of highly committed & talented people who’s efforts have undoubtedly played a key part in the significant growth of search marketing in New Zealand. Search has taken off since Google established a local office & the level of agency support we’ve experienced has been outstanding.
If Yahoo had a similar presence in the NZ market they’d no doubt be getting a far bigger share of the search cake.
According to the latest Hitwise figures Google has 92.52% of the total NZ search volume share whilst Yahoo has just 3.1% & Microsoft even less at 1.14%.
Sure, there’s much more to Google’s dominance than just having great people on the ground, but it’s certainly played a part.
Our best wishes & sincere thanks go to the local Google NZ team. Thanks guys, you’ve been terrific.
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- Yahoo & Microsoft Union Approved – Finally Some Real Competition for Google?
- New Zealand Online Advertising Spend Keeps Growing
Tags: google, news, search marketing, SEM
