Google axes 100 jobs

Google is cutting 100 jobs across the organisation in a bid to cut costs. The company is also terminating, stopping development on, or restricting access to six products – Catalog Search, Dodgeball, Jaiku, Mashup Editor, Notebook and Video.

The internet services company says it will axe recruitment staff, shut three engineering offices and close down a number of projects as it looks to reduce its operations in the face of the recession.

It will also review services such as Google Video. Over the next few months, it will no longer allow user upload and axe the Google Catalog Search service.

Online research tool Google Notebook will lose its developers and mobile social networking service Dodgeball, acquired by Google in 2005, will also be shut down “in the next couple of months”.

Google’s Mashup Editor, which never made it out of private beta, will also be terminated.

Laszlo Block, Google vice-president of people operations, says: “Given the state of the economy, we recognised that we needed fewer people focused on hiring. After much consideration, we have with great regret decided that we need to go further and reduce the overall size of our recruiting organisation.”