Google sheds some fat — up to 10,000 people

All these time that competing company Yahoo has been announcing layoffs after layoffs, no new has beens heard about Google’s status and its roster of employees. Maybe they’re not affected by the financial crisis as much as the rest.

Then, there’s the rumor that caught fire last Monday — about 10,000 contractors are affected by Google layoffs. According to an SEC filing, Google reported 20,123 employees by end of September 2008. However, the real number could actually be close to 30,000.

Google classifies the ~10,000 of the employees as temporary operational expenses or “workers”. Google co-founder Sergey Brin said, “There is no question that the number (of workers) is too high” {via}.

From a CNet article, Google spokeswoman Jane Penner vaguely confirmed that:

“We have 10,000, and we have had a plan in place for awhile to significantly reduce that number. This is something we’ve been thinking about for awhile–six or seven months. It predates the most acute phase of the (present economic) crisis.”

Just like any other publicly listed company these days, Google shares have been sliding down in the last 6 months — hitting an all-year low of of $247PHP 14,495INR 20,933EUR 235CNY 1,798 (from a high of $724.80PHP 42,535INR 61,427EUR 690CNY 5,275).

Google was able to reach 3rd quarter earnings expectations by trimming operational expenses. This could have included ending or not renewing contract workers.

But even before this, news of cutting cost across all Google offices have been making the rounds:

• Renting out extra office spaces in the Google New York office.
• Shutting down in-house cafes in the Google Plex.
• Limiting employee guests to two free meals a month and no more bringing home of dinner food.
• Shutting down some beta products and services like Lively, SearchMash, etc. and re-distributing human resources.

There’s also a report by Premium AdSense Publishers and AdWords Advertisers that this year’s Christmas gift from Google will be more modest — a 2GB USB flash drive.

Google has been really good to project to the public that they’re crisis-proof. Not sure how long they can handle it well though.